The Easiest Way to Type Special Language Characters
This blog post shows you the easiest way to type special language characters by using Text Blaze.
You can watch the video below, or read the step-by-step instructions in the article beneath it.
Video Overview
Detailed Guide
If you’re studying a foreign language that uses special characters (like Spanish, German, Norwegian, Swedish etc), you know that it’s really important to write them properly. In fact, if you do it wrong, your work could be misunderstood or even penalized.
Let’s take Spanish as an example.
Spanish has these special characters and their uppercase equivalents: á é í ó ú ü ñ
It also has the inverted “question mark” and “exclamation mark”: ¿ ¡
To write them, you could memorize and use the special numeric keypad codes while holding the ALT button.
For example if you’re on Windows, ALT+0225 gives you á.
But it won’t work without a keypad, so it’s useless on laptops.
Alternatively, you could find them in the Character Map (again on Windows). Or you could keep them saved in a document somewhere, and copy/paste them every time you need to use them.
But that’s not exactly convenient. Instead, you could do it in the blink of an eye with Text Blaze.
Text Blaze is a free Chrome extension that uses "snippets" to save you time from typing repetitive text.
A snippet is just a template that exists in Text Blaze, and that can be inserted anywhere in your Chrome browser by using its shortcut or the extension menu.
Here’s how you can create your snippet and use it for typing special language characters.
Step 0 — If you don’t have Text Blaze, you can register a free account and install the extension here
Step 1 — Visit the Text Blaze dashboard by clicking on the extension icon in Chrome, and clicking "Go to Dashboard". Or you can just follow this link: https://dashboard.blaze.today/
Step 2 — Click the big plus button at the top right to create a new snippet.
Step 3 — Give your snippet a name. This helps you keep track of it.
Step 4 — Give your snippet a shortcut. Shortcuts can be any combination of characters, so feel free to use something that makes sense to you.
Step 5 — In the snippet body, paste the special character that you want to use.
Step 6 — In the document where you want to print the special character, type your snippet shortcut and Text Blaze will replace it with the contents of the snippet.
Examples
Here are a few examples of special characters from the Spanish language.
Feel free to copy these snippets directly into your Text Blaze dashboard. All you need to do is click the "Copy to Text Blaze" button in the top right of the snippet example.
If you have the Pro version of Text Blaze, here's a more elegant way of handling your special characters using a drop-down menu in just one shortcut:
Again, you can copy this snippet directly into your Text Blaze dashboard by clicking the "Copy to Text Blaze" button in the top right of the snippet example.
Now you can create snippets for all the special characters you need, and they will work anywhere in your Chrome browser as long as the Text Blaze extension is installed.
We hope you’ve found this little productivity hack useful and that it will make your pursuit of a foreign language more enjoyable.
Hi there! You made it all the way down to the bottom of this article. Take a few seconds to share it.
Want to turbo charge your work with templates and snippets? Text Blaze is the fastest way to do that.
