Making Accents, Cent Symbols, and Other Specialty Letters with Microsoft Word

Have you been frustrated having to go to the Insert menu every time you want to use a special symbol? Well you do not have to do that sort of thing to get the symbols you want any longer. You wanted Spanish accented letters? You want to learn how to get the cent symbol easily? NO PROBLEM! Here's how you do it…

Go to your start menu, often times there will be your Microsoft Word program there, if not hit All Programs and follow through to open up your version of Microsoft Word. Now, hit the Number Lock key, it is imperative that you retain the ability to use the number pad (the set of numbers typically on the right of the keyboard).

OK, now start typing your letter like you normally would.

Querido Marsha,

Yo quiero hablar contigo…

But let's say you get to a word like tomorrow or in Spanish mañana, there are a few typical ways of putting in your ñ (eñe). You can use a translator program like Altavista's babelfish (www.altavista.com), which will translate the word, which you can then copy and paste into your document but this is highly unwieldy. The purpose of what you are about to learn is to make things less unwieldy. The problem with using the method that is about to be described is that is uses enormous memorization or it requires you to write down the list of codes and have it available for yourself.

The second way you can do things like cent symbols ¢ or accent marks is that you can leave room for them in what you type and put them in later. So rather than typing 36¢ or ¡Increíble!; one would type 36 or $0.36 and Increible! This is also unwieldy and it leaves room for all kinds of omissions and mistakes. Also a hand drawn accent mark is not uniform and looks particularly poor among all of your nice typed words.