Where can I find the ‘accents’ (sometimes called marks or symbols ) which are placed above vowels and other letters in many European languages? For example, ‘~’ above the letter ‘n’ in Spanish. The computer is running Windows XP with Office 2000.

There are two ways you can find these special letters: either through the Windows Character Map, or through Word 2000. If you use the Windows Character Map, you can cut and paste the letters into any application you like (e.g., Word, Notepad, Outlook Express). To open the Character Map, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘charmap’ (without the quotes) and click OK. Select the font you are using (e.g., Times New Roman) and you are presented with every character used in this font set. To copy a character, either single-click the character and click ‘Select’, or double-click the character. They are added to the ‘Characters to copy’ box. Once you have a ‘basket’ of all the characters you would like to copy, click ‘Copy’ and they will be copied to the clipboard. You can then paste them into other programs. You may also notice for some characters, when you click them in the bottom right-hand corner of the Character Map window, a shortcut key appears. For example, the shortcut for ñ is ALT-0241. By pressing ALT, typing the code, and releasing ALT, the character will appear (assuming you are using a font which has that character in its library).

Word may also be used to insert these special characters. To do this, go to the ‘Insert’ menu > ‘Symbol’¦’. Click the ‘Symbols’ tab and select the font. You can also create a special shortcut key so that whenever you type a specific key combination, the character will appear. However, the key combination will only work in Word, not other applications.