Information Technology
Chinese Language Typing Help
When typing in Chinese in Windows 2000, the following "Chinese IME Toolbar" appears (usually near the lower left-hand corner of the screen).
If the toolbar does not appear as above, with the character "zhong" (
) on the leftmost button, then before you can type in Chinese, you need to change to Pinyin input using the toolbar. Do this by clicking on the leftmost button on the Chinese IME toolbar.
The toolbar will then change as shown below, and you can start typing in Chinese. (If the toolbar appears as below when you first switch to the Chinese input system, you do not need to change it.)
Basic typing
By default, what you type (in Pinyin spelling) is converted into Chinese characters. For example, typing zhongwen will result in 
. As you type, you will see a small box appear with the letters you have already typed, as shown below.
Hitting "enter" on the keyboard causes the box to disappear, leaving what you have typed. However, the conversion is not yet final; you will notice that after hitting once, the characters are underlined.
The underlining means that you can still change the characters if necessary; you may have to do this, as sometimes the default character that appears for a given Pinyin spelling is not the one you need.
If you don't need to change the characters, you can hit "enter" again to complete the conversion and continue typing; otherwise, follow the character selection process below.
Character selection process
To begin the character selection process, hit the right arrow key on the keyboard. Doing this causes the character selection bar to appear.
Use the up and down arrow keys to move through the list one character at a time (or use the mouse to click on the arrow(s) at the end of the bar to move through the list up to nine characters at a time). Although the list is organized left-to-right, the right and left arrow keys are used to switch between characters you have already typed.
Do not hit "enter" during the character selection process, as this will cause the selection bar to disappear, reverting to the original characters. Instead, when you find the character that you want, either type the number in front of it (1-9) or click on it with the mouse to replace the original character with the alternate one.
Typing the number of the character or clicking on it with the mouse causes the default character to be replaced by the selected one; the character selection box then moves on to the next character.
You can either follow the same process to select a different character, or hit enter to keep the default character. If you don't change this next character, hitting "enter" finalizes any changes you have made and drops out of the character selection process completely, allowing you to continue typing Pinyin.
If you do change the character, however, the character selection bar will disappear, but all the characters will be underlined, allowing you to make changes again through the character selection process if you like. (If you are done making changes, hit "enter" again to remove the underlining and continue typing Pinyin).
Typing in English
If you need to type English letters (or words) or Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.), you can switch to the standard English keyboard without exiting the Chinese input system by clicking on the leftmost button (the zhong from zhongwen) on the Chinese IME Toolbar.
The toolbar then changes as shown below.
You can also click on the yellow semicircle (or half-moon) to switch between regular-width English characters (normal typing where each character has its own width; for example, m is wider than t) and full-width, meaning that one character will be exactly the same width and take up the space of one Chinese character. Click again on the leftmost button (now the first character in the word for "English") to switch back to typing in Chinese Pinyin.
Updated: October 2, 2003 by MSUM IT (support@mnstate.edu).
MSUM Home Page | MSUM IT Helpdesk | General languages help