Dead Key Characters; Additional Characters - IBM 5155 Manual To Operations

computer just waits for you to press another key, then
combines the two to make the special character. Dead
keys are not on the U.K., Italian, or U.S. English
keyboards. The other kind of special characters (we'll
call them additional characters) are typed using the Alt
key on the left side of the typewriter area. We will
describe these two types of special characters in more
detail on the following pages.
Dead Key Characters
Dead key characters are used to accent certain other
characters on the keyboard. The accent (dead) key is
pressed first, causing no cursor movement or display of
the character. Next the letter you want to accent is
pressed, and the entire character is read by the
computer and displayed on the screen. Dead keys and
the keys you can use them with are shaded on your
keyboard template. If you need to have the dead key
displayed by itself, press the Dead key, then the
spacebar and the accent will be placed on the screen by
itself (except for the .. character, which cannot be
displayed by itself.)
Note: One thing to remember when you're using
the dead keys: if you press a dead key and then a
key that is not allowed (not shaded on the keyboard
template), it causes unpredictable characters to
appear on the screen.
Additional Characters
Additional characters require the use of the Alt (and
sometimes the Ctrl) keys. There are Altl Ctrl
characters, which are printed on the FRONT of the
keys, and ASCII characters, which are listed on the
back of each keyboard template.
Keyboard 3-15