How can I insert a ¿ character in a latex file

Question

After a couple of hours looking at Google for a solution, I arrived here for help. So, please!

I just want to insert a ¿ symbol.

Anyone know how to do that?

Try \textquestiondown, see also How do I look up a symbol? — Scott H., Jun 09 '13 at 05:11
Hmmm.... I don't think this is exactly a duplicate, at least not from "How do I look up a symbol". In this case the OP is asking for a Spanish symbol which can be input directly from the keyboard once inputenc is loaded with the apppropriate encoding. The answers to the other question don't apply here. — Gonzalo Medina, Jun 09 '13 at 05:59
@GonzaloMedina Perhaps the related How to use Spanish accents then? — Scott H., Jun 09 '13 at 07:28

karlkoeller · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-09T06:30:40.267

12

The easiest way, in text mode (I don't think it is needed in math mode), is to write:

?`

PS: I would have written the above as a comment but I haven't been able to do that because the needed character is the one used for writing code...

edited Jun 09 '13 at 06:30

answered Jun 09 '13 at 05:49

karlkoeller

124,410

3

karlkoeller -- the backtick notation is only available in ot1 encoding; thus your answer is inconsistent with all the others'... the other possibility in ot1, even simpler on the fingers, is > for \textexclamdown and < for \textquestiondown ... (personally i would go for utf-8 if i were writing an inflected language.) – wasteofspace Jun 09 '13 at 07:41
@wasteofspace 1. Sorry for the answer, I just wanted to post a comment. 2. I know that it is only available in OT1 (anyway I didn't know about < and >). 3. I switched to utf-8 years ago, I was just remembering the way I was used to write such 'strange' characters without utf-8. – karlkoeller Jun 09 '13 at 07:56

Gonzalo Medina · Answer 2 · 2013-06-09T06:03:09.687

7

Use inputenc and input the character directly from your keyboard:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\begin{document}

¿

\end{document}

enter image description here

Of course, make sure your editor is also set to Unicode. If your editor encoding is set to ISO-8859-1 then load inputenc with the latin1 option:

  \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}

edited Jun 09 '13 at 06:03

answered Jun 09 '13 at 05:50

Gonzalo Medina

505,128

How can I insert a ¿ character in a latex file

2 Answers2