We Don't Need No Stinkin' Special Keyboards!
The September edition of VOZ, (our monthly newsletter which you can download or subscribe to by clicking here) has an interesting story about how it appears The Des Moines Register cannot reproduce special characters when typesetting stories. This is of particular importance when typesetting something in Spanish.
This week's edition of the paper's Datebook insert, (The Register's entertainment guide) features a cover story on this weekend's Latino Heritage Festival. The headline reads "Excelente!"
The word is spelled correctly, but a reversed exclamation point is missing right before the letter "E" in "Excelente". The story in this month's newsletter highlights how The Register claims it cannot reproduce the tilde or curled mark over the letter "N," another special character within the Spanish language.
Here's why this really fries my bacon. Typos in English are unacceptable, why should they be acceptable in Spanish? Many people think that to reproduce special characters like accents, tildes or reversed punctuation, you have to have a special keyboard or software program. Not so. The keyboard operator simply has to know the correct keystroke combination to produce the symbols. Any standard U.S. issue computer keyboard will do.
A reversed exclamation point is produced by simply holding down the option or alternate key and pressing the number 1 key. It's that simple.
