Alt+number combinations for French Accented Characters
This is a question that crops up from time to time, and indeed has frustrated me on occasion too. Do you end up writing your french language email, word processed document or website content and just omit the accents because your keyboard doesn"t have them? Do you do as I used to and copy accented characters from other documents and websites and then paste them in to your document? Well here is a quick way to enable you to type accented characters into your documents quickly and easily….
Using the numeric keypad on your keyboard (make sure you have enabled it by pressing the "Num Lock" key first), hold down your keyboard "Alt" key, then type the 3 digit code for the character you want (see table right), then release the "Alt" key again. You should then see the character you want appear in your document or email.
There are other ways of incorporating accented characters into your typing :
- If you are using Microsoft Word (or similar) you can use the Insert menu and look for "Symbol" or "Special Characters" (depending on your product). Then, just look for the character you want and add it to your document
- You can change your keyboard configuration by going to Control Panel / Languages (Windows users), but you need to be careful with this and so it"s worth reading more before going down this route.
From Chris Jewell:
Nice tip !
I have always used the character map in “start/all programs/accessories/system tools/charater map” then copy and past, but the tips you give here are much quicker.
From annewilliams:
There is a quicker way of typing accents in Microsoft Word which I have taught many GCSE and A level students to use. To type the following accented letters follow these guidelines:-
e acute: use the keys ctrl, apostrophe, e in fairly rapid sucession.
For e grave: use the keys ctrl, `[ top left before 1], e
For circumflex on a, e, i, o, u: use the keys ctrl and shift, 6, and the vowel required
For cedilla: use ctrl, comma, c
For umlaut on a,o,u: use ctrl, colon and the letter required.
If you wish to accent capital letters follow the same pattern but put Caps Lock on first.
You can cut and paste accented text into emails from a Word Document.
This may also work in other word processing programs, and apparently on the Apple Mac you may need to use the ‘Apple’ key instead of the CTRL-key to achieve the same effect, but I guess you Mac users already knew that!
Good luck – it takes a little practice but is a real time saver once you have mastered it.
Anne