María Corina Machado (also properly written as Mª Corina Machado) is a famous Venezuelan woman has been all over worldwide news recently for two reasons: 1, Because she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 and 2, because she just had an important meeting in Washington, DC. I’m not Venezuelan, not Latin American nor a Spaniard. I frequently publish in both the Castilian and in English languages, in addition to being a language activist and keyboard aficionado. Even though Venezuela is the Castilian-speaking country I have visited the most frequently (16 times until 1999) and the nation where I’m more familiar with slang terms and gastronomic delights and their terminology than any of the many others I’ve visited, this article isn’t about that. This article is how Mª Corina Machado has now become the most internationally famous representative for the Spanish ISO keyboard and its advantages, of which I published two recent articles in 2025: Spanish keyboard: Which of the three layouts? and I created a superior software layout for the Spanish keyboard for Mac: «Español ISO mejorado».

In the Hispanic world, many compound first names start with the name María. Here are some examples, followed by the abbreviated versions of each:

• María Alejandra — Mª Alejandra
• María Ángela — Mª Ángela
• María Ángeles — Mª Ángeles
• María Antonia — Mª Antonia
• María Auxiliadora — Mª Auxiliadora
• María Camila — Mª Camila
• María Carmen — Mª Carmen
• María Cecillia — Mª Cecilia
• María Claudia — Mª Claudia
• María Corina — Mª Corina
• María Cristina — Mª Cristina
• María Daniela — Mª Daniela
• María Delfina — Mª Delfina
• María Dolores — Mª Dolores
• María Elena — Mª Elena
• María Esperanza — Mª Esperanza
• María Eugenia — Mª Eugenia
• María Fernanda — Mª Fernanda
• María Gabriela — Mª Gabriela
• María Isabel — Mª Isabel
• María José — Mª José
• María Julia — Mª Julia
• María Julieta — Mª Julieta
• María Laura — Mª Laura
• María Mercedes — Mª Mercedes
• María Milagros — Mª Milagros
• María Paz — Mª Paz
• María Sol — Mª Sol
• María Verónica — Mª Verónica
• María Teresa — Mª Teresa

This symbol ª together with the º are used for feminine and masculine symbols including ordinal numbers like 1ª, 2ª, 3ª and 1º, 2º, 3º (equivalent to 1st, 2nd, 3rd) , as well as to abbreviate the name María as Mª when used within a compound name like the examples shown above. The Spanish ISO keyboard (my favorite among the three covered in my recent article Spanish keyboard: Which of the three layouts?) has direct access to the feminine valuable symbol ª . The Latin American keyboard is machista and is missing the feminine symbol, including only the masculine one: º.

Font (typography) with the ª and º symbols

Some fonts automatically underline the symbol and others don’t.

The bare basics

The basics are included in the Latin American keyboard as well as the Spanish ISO keyboard:

• á — Á
• é — É
• í — Í
• ó — Ó
• ú — Ú
• ü — Ü
• ñ — Ñ
• ¿ — The inverted question mark.
• ¡ — The inverted exclamation mark.
• º — The symbol for masculine ordinal numbers like 1º, 2º, 3º.
• $ — The currency symbol for different types of dollars and pesos.

The essential extras

These essential extras are not included in the Latin American keyboard, but are included in Spanish ISO keyboards, with some limitations among operating systems as indicated below.

• ª — For the feminine ordinal numbers like 1ª, 2ª, 3ª and compound names, as covered earlier in this article, works out of the box with ChromeOS (Chromebook,), Linux, macOS and Windows.
• € — The euro currency symbol (in addition to the $ symbol), works out of the box with ChromeOS (Chromebook), Linux, macOS and Windows.
• «angular quotation marks» Works with ChromeOS (Chromebook,), Linux out of the box. Works on macOS if you install the Español ISO Mejorado map I introduced in this article: I created a superior software layout for the Spanish keyboard for Mac: «Español ISO mejorado» Requires a one-time workaround on Windows.
• ý/Ý — Required by the RAE since 2010. Works out of the box with ChromeOS (Chromebook,), Linux out of the box. Works on macOS if you install the Español ISO Mejorado map I introduced in this article: I created a superior software layout for the Spanish keyboard for Mac: «Español ISO mejorado» Requires a one-time workaround on Windows.

The moral of the story (La moraleja)

If you are looking for a keyboard to facilitate typing in Castilian, without sacrificing anything to type in English, Catalán, French, Italian, Portuguese or other languages which use Latin/Roman letters, see my curated Spanish ISO keyboards at TuTeclado.com. They all follow the QWERTY layout, so the transition should be under 33 seconds if you are used to the US keyboard layout or other QWERTY layout. You can have your menus in English (or any other language) when installing the Spanish ISO keyboard and keymap, if you prefer, since the keyboard setting is independent from your UI (user interface) setting. Let freedom ring!

Image credit

The main image of María Corina Machado is courtesy of Kevin Payravi / WikiPortraits under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. I added the lower third.

Lee este artículo en buen castellano

María Corina Machado: Premio Nobel de la Paz + símbolo del teclado Español ISO

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