Microsoft Word

The Convenient Method: The accents for the Romance languages can be inserted with a short series of keystrokes. This method allows you to insert an accented character without making any global changes to your word processor or computer.

Example:

The table below provides the codes for all Western accent marks. Note that they are not hard to remember: they use the accent grave (`) and tilde (~) key on the keyboard for the accent grave and tilde, the apostrophe (') for the acute accent, the colon (:) for umlauts (ü), the comma for the c cedilla (ç), and the ? and ! keys to produce the ¿ and the ¡.

In Word, go to Help, click on Contents and Index. In Index, enter "type international characters." You will get this list.

Reconfigure Method: Word's Help file guides you through a 4-step process that changes the language Word is working in, and then through a 6-step process that changes your keyboard.

Your Word program and your keyboard are now operating in, let's say, Spanish. You can tell this by looking at the lower right corner of your screen. The letters "Es" will be displayed next to the clock. You can click on that abbreviation to bring up the complete list of all keyboards you have chosen and to change from one to another.

Advantages to using this system:

• If you use this process to change the language Word will use the spell checker in that language.
• Word will automatically correct punctuation according to the rules of the language you have chosen.
• Word will insert dates in the European style (day/month/year) instead of the U.S. style (month/day/year).

Disadvantages to using this system:

• You will of course have to select English on both the Tools menu and on the keyboard display to convert Word back to English.
• Unfortunately, Word does not display where the accented keys are on the modified keyboard. It just warns you that "the characters that appear on your screen may no longer correspond to the characters that are printed on your keyboard."
• You have to remember to switch back and forth between languages if you are writing a paper in English but need to use the correct accents when quoting a Spanish phrase or giving an author's name.
• The changes are not consistent. That is, if you are have a standard English keyboard on your desk but have selected a French keyboard through Windows, you press the "9" key to get the c cedilla (ç). If you are using a standard English keyboard to type but have selected the standard Spanish keyboard through Windows, you press "/" to get ç.