N With Tilde (ñ): Copy the Spanish Eñe and Type It on Any Keyboard
Copy ñ or Ñ in one click, learn the shortcut for every system, and why it is a letter rather than an n with a decoration.
Fifteenth letter · U+00F1
The n with tilde is not a decorated n: it is a letter of the Spanish alphabet in its own right. Copy it in lowercase or uppercase.
- Unicode ñ
- U+00F1
- Unicode Ñ
- U+00D1
- Windows
- Alt + 0241
What is the n with tilde?
The n with tilde (ñ) is the fifteenth letter of the Spanish alphabet and the only one it does not share with the basic Latin alphabet. It represents the palatal nasal sound and occupies Unicode code point U+00F1.
The distinction matters more than it seems: the eñe is not an n carrying a diacritic, any more than English «ch» is a decorated c. It has its own name, its own slot in alphabetical order — between n and o — and its own dictionary entry. Treating it as an accent is the root of almost every technical problem it causes.
That is also why accent-stripping tools have to handle it separately. In our accent remover the ñ is preserved by default: taking off the tilde does not simplify the word, it turns it into a different one.
How to type the n with tilde on every system
Shortcuts differ depending on whether you want lowercase or uppercase, and some systems need two keys in sequence.
Windows
For lowercase ñ. For uppercase Ñ use Alt + 0209.
Legacy MS-DOS codes: Alt + 164 (ñ) and Alt + 165 (Ñ).
macOS
Press Option + N, then N again.
For uppercase: Option + N, then Shift + N.
Linux
On layouts with an AltGr key.
With a Compose key: Compose, then ~ then n.
Android
The ñ appears in the pop-up menu.
With Caps enabled you get the uppercase Ñ.
iPhone & iPad
Slide your finger onto the ñ.
No need to install the Spanish keyboard.
Word & HTML
Accent shortcut inside Microsoft Word.
In HTML: ñ and Ñ. In CSS: \00F1 and \00D1.
Here is a detail almost nobody explains: the Windows codes are not arbitrary. Alt + 0241 works because 241 is exactly the Unicode number of ñ, and 209 is that of Ñ. Remember the Unicode value and you already know the shortcut.
The older Alt + 164 and Alt + 165 codes are a legacy of MS-DOS and its code page 437. They still work on many machines, but the four-digit codes are the ones that match the current standard.
Where the tilde comes from
The eñe was born out of thrift. In medieval monasteries copying by hand was slow and parchment expensive, so scribes abbreviated repeated sequences. The Latin double n — annus, cabanna — was shortened to a single n with a small n written above it, which over time was stylised into the tilde we know.
What began as a space-saving trick ended up fixed as a letter. By the time printing arrived, the abbreviation was so established in Castilian that it was cast as its own type, and from there it entered the alphabet. Other Romance languages solved the same sound differently: Portuguese with nh, French and Italian with gn, Catalan with ny.
1991: when the ñ nearly vanished from keyboards
1991
The European Economic Community proposed allowing the sale of keyboards without the ñ key, citing barriers to free trade in computer equipment.
The reaction was immediate. The Real Academia Española issued a report calling the measure a grave attack against the official language, and the protest crossed the Atlantic: writers including Gabriel García Márquez and María Elena Walsh publicly joined the defence of the letter.
The dispute was settled in law. On 23 April 1993 the Spanish government approved a Royal Decree requiring the ñ to remain on keyboards sold in Spain, invoking the cultural exception clause of the Maastricht Treaty. It is probably the only case of a letter needing legislative protection to survive a change in technology.
The episode explains why the eñe now works as an emblem of linguistic identity, appearing in the Instituto Cervantes logo and in cultural campaigns. It is not just a letter: it is the letter that had to be defended.
The n with tilde in domains, URLs and email
This is where the eñe still causes trouble. Domains containing ñ have existed since 2003, but underneath they are translated into an encoding called Punycode, which is what actually travels across the network. You can convert any domain in the URL encoder, which also handles the path with percent encoding.
| What you type | What the browser resolves |
|---|---|
| españa.com | xn--espaa-rta.com |
| mañana.es | xn--maana-pta.es |
| niño.mx | xn--nio-8ma.mx |
| peña.com.ar | xn--pea-8ma.com.ar |
It works, but there is a practical cost: the domain looks odd when copied, some mail clients fail to linkify it, and printed campaigns invite typos. That is why many brands register the ñ version and redirect it to the plain one.
For internal blog addresses the call is clearer: replace it. A title like «El niño y la montaña» should produce the URL el-nino-y-la-montana, which our slug generator handles automatically.
A less visible problem is double encoding. The ñ can be stored as a single character (U+00F1) or as an n followed by a combining tilde (U+006E + U+0303). On screen they are identical, but to a search engine or a database they are different strings, which produces duplicates and searches that return nothing. If a text looks suspicious, run it through clean text.
Which languages use ñ besides Spanish
Unlike ¿ and ¡, which are almost exclusive to Spanish, the n with tilde has spread to more than a dozen languages, many through historical contact with Castilian.
- Asturian
- Galician
- Basque
- Guaraní
- Quechua
- Aymara
- Filipino
- Chamorro
- Mapudungun
- Wolof
- Breton
- Bubi
In Guaraní, Quechua or Filipino the letter arrived with Spanish writing and stayed on to represent sounds of those languages. It is a detail that tends to surprise: the eñe is more international than the opening marks that sit beside it on the keyboard.
Common mistakes with the eñe
It is not a decorated n: it holds its own place in the alphabet, between n and o, and has its own dictionary entry.
Dropping the tilde is not cosmetic: it changes the meaning of the word completely.
The tilde survives capitalisation. Writing NINO is an error, not a valid simplification.
If you need the other characters unique to Spanish, the upside down question mark and the upside down exclamation mark have their own pages.
Frequently asked questions
How do I type n with tilde on an English keyboard?
Is ñ a letter or an n with a symbol on top?
How do I type the uppercase Ñ?
Can I use n with tilde in a domain or an email address?
What happens to ñ in blog URLs?
What is the Unicode code point for n with tilde?
Why does ñ sometimes break when I copy and paste?
Which other languages use ñ?
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