Foreign Language Word Processing in the ICC Learning Center
International Communications and Culture Department, SUNY Cortland
 

US-International Keyboard

The US-International keyboard uses the ', `, ~, ^, " as dead keys (highlighted in blue below), and uses Right-ALT plus !, ?, and a number of other keys to produce characters not normally available.  The accents are intuitive, and they work with the standard US keyboard so students do not need to learn any special codes or non-standard letter positions.

Tap the accent dead key, then tap the vowel for which you want the accent.  The ' dead key also works for the cedilla:

Hitting the spacebar or a non-accented letter after a dead key produces the key's normal value, i.e. ', `, ~, ^, or ".  Caveat:  If you type fast, it is easy to get an accent when you actually meant to type a real apostrophe before a vowel.

Other special characters can be entered by using the Right-Alt key in combination with other keys  (esp. useful for ¿,  ¡  «, »  ß).  For Spanish, it might be easier to use the Right-Alt key for accents too:

Keyboard Selection

	To select a different base keyboard in the ICC lab, click on the symbol on the taskbar (or Alt-Shift) to choose from a variety of foreign keyboards.
To select the US-International keyboard in the ICC lab, click on the symbol for a choice between the US and US-International keyboards. Documentation for Windows XP

Spelling and grammar proofing in MS Word:

Spell check, grammar, and thesaurus software for French and Spanish is available for MS Word. The correct dictionary will be used automatically for any part of a document, and the language for text can also be set manually (see Review menu).

Keyboards outside the ICC lab:

In other computer labs, you may need to use Word's built-in shortcut keys for typing accents.

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