The Ñ in Spanish
ñ is an n with a tilde over it, U+00F1, and this page opens on it: the character large, with its codepoint, its HTML entity and the keystroke for macOS, Windows and Linux beside it. Click it to copy, or read the sequence once and type it yourself. The other eight Spanish characters sit on the same page, the case control switches everything to Ñ, and the type-here field puts the tilde on the last plain n in a word you type, so espanol becomes español.
Click a character to copy it. The keystroke under each key is for the platform you picked.
A key copies its character. With something in the field, the same click also puts the accent on the last plain a, e, i, o, u or n it finds, so cafe becomes café. When the accent belongs somewhere else in the word, as in mañana, copy the character and type it where it goes. Hold Alt and type the four digits on the numeric keypad with Num Lock on. The number row above the letters does not work. On a laptop with no keypad, switch the input to the United States international layout, where an apostrophe followed by the vowel gives the accent.
Worked examples
- café
- mamá
- español
Every character, with its keystrokes
The same nine characters the keys carry, in the case the control above is set to. The Windows column needs the numeric keypad with Num Lock on, and the Linux column is the United States international layout with AltGr.
| Character | Name | Codepoint | macOS | Windows alt code | Linux, US international |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| á | a with acute | U+00E1á | Option+E, then A | Alt+0225 | AltGr+A |
| é | e with acute | U+00E9é | Option+E, then E | Alt+0233 | AltGr+E |
| í | i with acute | U+00EDí | Option+E, then I | Alt+0237 | AltGr+I |
| ó | o with acute | U+00F3ó | Option+E, then O | Alt+0243 | AltGr+O |
| ú | u with acute | U+00FAú | Option+E, then U | Alt+0250 | AltGr+U |
| ñ | n with tilde | U+00F1ñ | Option+N, then N | Alt+0241 | AltGr+N |
| ü | u with diaeresis | U+00FCü | Option+U, then U | Alt+0252 | AltGr+Y |
| ¿ | inverted question mark | U+00BF¿ | Option+Shift+? | Alt+0191 | AltGr+Shift+? |
| ¡ | inverted exclamation mark | U+00A1¡ | Option+1 | Alt+0161 | AltGr+1 |
Common questions
- How do I type ñ?
- On macOS, Option and N, let go, then N, with Shift on that second N for Ñ. On Windows, hold Alt and type 0241 on the numeric keypad with Num Lock on, or 0209 for Ñ. On Linux with the United States international layout, AltGr and N, or AltGr and Shift and N for the capital. Clicking the key on this page copies the character instead.
- Is ñ an accented n or a letter of its own?
- A letter of its own. Spanish counts ñ as the fifteenth letter of its alphabet, with its own place in a dictionary between n and o, and the mark on top is called a virgulilla. It came from medieval scribes writing a small n above the line to stand for a doubled nn, which is why año traces back to the Latin annus.
- What happens if I write n instead of ñ?
- You usually write a different word. Campaña is a campaign and campana is a bell, cañón is a canyon or a cannon and canon is a canon, and a search or a form will treat the two as unrelated. That is the reason to copy the character rather than approximate it.
- Is anything uploaded?
- No. The character, its codepoint and the keystrokes are part of the page, so nothing is sent anywhere and there is no account. The only thing kept is the platform and the case you picked, in this browser.
Every key copies the standard Unicode codepoint for that character and nothing else, so what lands in your clipboard is exactly what you clicked. The keystrokes are the documented sequences for each platform.