I posted this in a thread about how to sing in a foreign language, but since it's also useful in many other contexts I thought I'd give it its own Tech thread... may well be duplication of some earlier effort of mine or someone else's, but here it is anyway...

If you're typing on a full-fledged desktop-PC keyboard with a calculator pad on the right side of the keyboard, you can probably get accents for Spanish (and French and German and Italian and Portuguese and Scandihoovian, and even some fancy-pants varieties of English) by holding down the ALT key while typing four-digit numbers on the calculator keypad:

à as in Che serà is ALT+0224
á as in Que será is ALT+0225
â as in mon âme is ALT+0226
ã as in São Paulo is ALT+0227
ä as in Häagen Dazs is ALT+0228
å as in smörgåsbord is ALT+0229
æ as in Encyclopædia is ALT+0230
ç as in façade is ALT+0231
è as in ma mère is ALT+0232
é as in alabaré is ALT+0233
ê as in moi-même is ALT+0234
ë as in the Brontë sisters is ALT+0235
ì as in lunedì, martedì... is ALT+0236
í as in para mí is ALT+0237
î as in maître d' is ALT+0238
ï as in Thaïs is ALT+0239
ð as in Loftleiðir Icelandic airlines is ALT+0240
ñ as in pequeño is ALT+0241
ò as in che può amare is ALT+0242
ó as in mi amor, mi corazón is ALT+0243
ô as in À toi la gloire, ô Ressuscité! is ALT+0244
õ as in õigekeelsussõnaraamat (standard dictionaries in Estonian!) is ALT+0245
ö as in bei mir bist du schön is ALT+0246
ø as in øl is ALT+0248
ù as in Più bella cosa is ALT+0249
ú as in hijo único is ALT+0250
û as in jeûne (as opposed to jeune) is ALT+0251
ü as in Deutschland über alles is ALT+0252
ý as in býr, mýl (in Sindarin) is ALT+0253
þ as in þe Olde Curiosity Shoppe is ALT+0254
ÿ as in L'Haÿ-les-Roses is ALT+0255
ß as in muß i' denn is ALT+0223

Note: many laptops, notebooks, etc, do not support this approach (this is my single biggest gripe about my own laptop, which was configured without my advice by a nephew who didn't know about this stuff). And Apple products use different systems to get odd letters.

Note: The above system, if it works on your keyboard>screen, can also be used to get a variety of other characters you may find handy at times, such as

—, an em-dash, is ALT+0151 (150 is en-dash)
¡ as in ¡Hola! is ALT+0161
¿ as in ¿Donde? is ALT+0191
½, one-half, is ALT+0189
©, Copyright, is ALT+0169
®, Registered Trademark, is ALT+0174
™, simple trademark, is ALT+0153
£, pound ("sterling") sign, is ALT+0163
¥, yen sign, is ALT+0165
«, left-pointing pointy quotes, is ALT+0171
», right-pointing pointy quotes, is ALT+0187
¢, cent sign, is ALT+0162
¶, "Pilcrow" i.e. paragraph, is ALT+0182
†, cross, is ALT+0134
‡, double-cross, is ALT+0135
…, ellipsis, is ALT+0133

etc.; you can also get capitalized diacriticized letters from À ALT+0192 to Þ ALT+0222 in more or less the same order as the lower-case ones.

Merry typing!

{{later}}

And for some unknown reason, ALT+0140 and ALT+0156 are Œ and œ. Never have figured out why they aren't in the alphabetized section of the list, nor why ÷ (ALT+0247) is in the alphabetized part…

PS I apologize for the thread drift, but when the topic has to do with foreign-language texts, as highlighted by Allan C's comment «"Ta" is a contraction of "esta'" (I can't figure out how to put accent marks over the appropriate letter)», this information may be very helpful and pertinent...

Haruo