How to type Spanish letters?
If I want to ask somebody how old they are, I know that I need to ask "¿Cuántos años tiene?. I often skip the upsidedown question mark thing and the accented a but I dare not forget the "ñ" to avoid getting an answer that translates to "only one". If you get this joke, you understand my frustration.

I have been doing a cut/paste thing to makes Spanish letters. I know that there are ways to get the letters out of my American keyboard but it's not easy and I haven't learned them yet. What is the best way to type Spanish? I'd like to hear some suggestions. Should I consider buying a Spanish keyboard for this? My laptop runs Windows 10. Thanks.

Question

How to type Spanish letters?
If I want to ask somebody how old they are, I know that I need to ask "¿Cuántos años tiene?.  I often skip the upsidedown question mark thing and the accented a but I dare not forget the "ñ" to avoid getting an answer that translates to "only one".  If you get this joke, you understand my frustration.

I have been doing a cut/paste thing to makes Spanish letters.  I know that there are ways to get the letters out of my American keyboard but it's not easy and I haven't learned them yet.  What is the best way to type Spanish?  I'd like to hear some suggestions.  Should I consider buying a Spanish keyboard for this?  My laptop runs Windows 10.  Thanks.

Answer

Set your keyboard to United States-International. 
Then entering Spanish characters will be fairly easy. For instance, if you want accentuation on vowels, just type the apostrophe key (you won't see anything at first) followed by the vowel. The tilde above the n can be obtained by using Ctrl+Alt then the letter n (ñ). Inverted ?, same thing: Ctrl+Alt then the question mark key (¿), this could also be done with the inverted exclamation mark; just use the appropriate key (¡). What else? Of the dieresis, (I think that's what they're called), in words like pingüino, ungüento can be obtained by Ctrl+Alt then the letter y.

Others: «»  = Ctrl+Alt then [ or ] respectively. Actually everything I just learned everything can be obtained using the Ctrl+Alt combination, including accentuation:

á = Ctrl+Alt then letter a ... etc é, í, ó, ú. I just prefer typing the apostrophe key first then the letter (faster)

If you want accented letters to be capitalized? Either:
Ctrl+Alt+Shift then the letter (Álvaro) or hit the apostrophe key first then Shift+letter: É.

PS: The ü can also be obtained by keying the double-quotation mark key (Shift+'), then the letter: ü,ï.

¡Ojalá que te ayude!

Answer

There is no need to buy a keyboard with Spanish lettering my friend. In order to get the accents/markings of your choice, what you need to do is utilize these things called ALT Codes. In order to correctly use them, you hold down the Left Alt key on your keyboard whilst simultaneously pressing in a specified code on your keyboard's numpad. Don't worry, most of the codes are a sequence of only three numbers, and pressing them becomes muscle memory after a while. The ones you will need to type properly in Spanish are "ALT + 160" for á, "ALT + 162" for ó, "ALT + 130" for é, "ALT + 164" for ñ, and "ALT + 163" for ú. If you feel you want to use the inverted question mark or exclamation mark, you can use "ALT + 168" and "ALT + 173", respectively.

Answer

Hi, i think the best way to write spanish it's change your keyboard to spanish, i do not really sure how to do ot but, a bought a lap top in USA and the keyboard has not the keys like ñ, tilde á , or ¿, and a friend change my keyboard settings, and the ñ appears in _- key by L key. I hope you can do that, just have to find the other keys, and only change five or six keys, cheers

Answer

Hola Johnny, ¿finalmente lo resolviste? ¿Tienes alguna duda del español?