- Joined
- Wednesday August 26, 2009
- Location
- New Forest, England.
I'm used to being the last one to discover things but thought at least someone else here would find this useful. I often have to reply to enquiries from people who have accent marks on their names and now keep this handy:
Accent Marks
There are a lot of accent marks you can put over (and under) letters, but here are the ones i know/can find (i think this covers all the major ones at least); in most cases, applying an accent to a letter on the Mac is a two-keystroke process - first you type the key combination that creates the accent mark, then you type the letter over which you want the mark to appear...for example, to make ê (an e with the little hat on top), you first type option-i, and then the letter e. so here goes:
typing option-e before the letter will put an accent aigu (i believe it is) over the letter - á, é, Ã, ó, ú
option-` (the key to the left of the 1 in the top row of the keyboard) before the letter will put an accent grave over the letter - à , è, ì, ò, ù
option-u before the letter will put an umlaut over the letter - ä, ë, ï, ö, ü
option-n before the letter will put...one of those squiggly lines over it - ã, õ, ñ (this doesn't work with the other vowels - i guess the squiggle never appears over those)
option-i before the letter puts the little hat on top - â, ê, î, ô, û
option-c by itself makes a c with a cedilla under it - ç
and if you're running Mac OS X, you can go to the Apple menu in the upper left of your screen, choose 'System Preferences...', click the Keyboard preferences pane, and under the Keyboard tab, check the box labeled, "Show Keyboard & Character Viewer in menu bar." this will make a little icon appear in the menu bar across the top of your screen; if you click that icon and choose "Show Keyboard Viewer," a little keyboard will appear on your screen. if you look at that while you press various keys on your keyboard, like Shift or Option or Command, you'll see what to press in combination with the keys you're holding down.
Accent Marks
There are a lot of accent marks you can put over (and under) letters, but here are the ones i know/can find (i think this covers all the major ones at least); in most cases, applying an accent to a letter on the Mac is a two-keystroke process - first you type the key combination that creates the accent mark, then you type the letter over which you want the mark to appear...for example, to make ê (an e with the little hat on top), you first type option-i, and then the letter e. so here goes:
typing option-e before the letter will put an accent aigu (i believe it is) over the letter - á, é, Ã, ó, ú
option-` (the key to the left of the 1 in the top row of the keyboard) before the letter will put an accent grave over the letter - à , è, ì, ò, ù
option-u before the letter will put an umlaut over the letter - ä, ë, ï, ö, ü
option-n before the letter will put...one of those squiggly lines over it - ã, õ, ñ (this doesn't work with the other vowels - i guess the squiggle never appears over those)
option-i before the letter puts the little hat on top - â, ê, î, ô, û
option-c by itself makes a c with a cedilla under it - ç
and if you're running Mac OS X, you can go to the Apple menu in the upper left of your screen, choose 'System Preferences...', click the Keyboard preferences pane, and under the Keyboard tab, check the box labeled, "Show Keyboard & Character Viewer in menu bar." this will make a little icon appear in the menu bar across the top of your screen; if you click that icon and choose "Show Keyboard Viewer," a little keyboard will appear on your screen. if you look at that while you press various keys on your keyboard, like Shift or Option or Command, you'll see what to press in combination with the keys you're holding down.