Not All Spanish Keyboards Are Created Equal

You know what’s frustrating? I’ll tell you what’s frustrating. The bittersweet experience of receiving a new computer from your I.T. department only to spend the next few days and weeks recreating all your bookmarks, preferences, scripts, and other very serious quality-of-life issues.

Whether it is your first or zillionth time configuring your international keyboard to use multiple languages, you notice there are lots and lots of choices for Spanish. Funny thing about all those Spanish keyboards is not all of them include the letters and punctuation you want. In fact, some of them seem to be no different than the regular old English keyboard.

The examples below show that some Spanish keyboards have the handy “ñ” with a tilde along with my precious “¡” and “¿” which I use liberally, if for no other reason, because I think it impresses people and I like to be impressive.

Some of them have these symbols, of course—the layouts are just a wee bit different so you must test Shift or even Alt to find out where they are. That’s where using the Preview feature whilst choosing your Spanish keyboard (or having the On-Screen Keyboard open) is def handy. No, not Jeff Handy—def handy.