How do you type accents?
You have a number of options:
We recommend learning and using the shortcuts: they're fast and easy and they work in any software (Word, Firefox, email, etc.). The boxes on this page explain the shortcuts as well as the other methods.
On a Mac, you can type accents and other special characters without changing the keyboard settings. If you learn these basic shortcuts, you can type accented letters in any software, including Word, Firefox, email, etc.
Shortcuts for Accents on a Mac:
Follow these key strokes to add accents to characters. Hold down the Option key followed by the appropriate symbol and the accent will appear underlined in your document. Then, type any of the available characters, and the accent will be added to that letter.
Accent Type | Key Strokes | Available Characters |
Grave ` | (Option Key + `) + Character | À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù |
Acute ´ | (Option Key + e) + Character | Á á É é Í í Ó ó Ú ú |
Circumflex ˆ | (Option Key + i) + Character | Â â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û |
Tilde ˜ | (Option Key + n) + Character | Ã ã Ñ ñ Õ õ |
Umlaut ¨ | (Option Key + u) + Character | Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü Ÿ ÿ |
French cedille ç |
(Shift for uppercase) (Option Key + c) |
ç Ç |
Upside-down exclamation mark ¡ | (Option Key + 1) | ¡ |
Upside-down question mark ¿ | (Option Key + Shift + ?) | ¿ |
German Sharp/Double S ß | (Option Key + s) | ß |
To type accents on Windows, the easiest option is to activate the United States-International keyboard layout:
Go to Start, then Control Panel and click on the 'Region and Language Link'. Then, go to the 'Keyboards and Languages' tab and click Change Keyboards. Click Add, and you'll find "United States International" listed under English (US). You may also want to make this your default keyboard.
Now, you can use the table below to type the accents you want. You will need to hold down the shift key for some symbols (e.g. ~ or ^).
Press this key | Then press this key | Resulting character |
Apostrophe ' | c, e, y, u, i, o, a | ç, é, ý, ú, í, ó, á |
Quotation Marks " | e, y, u, i, o, a | ë, ÿ, ü, ï, ö, ä |
Grave ` | e, u, i, o, a | è, ù, ì, ò, à |
Tilde ~ | o, n, a | õ, ñ, ã |
Caret ^ | e, u, i, o, a | ê, û, î, ô, â |
ctrl(Control)+ alt(OPTION) | , (comma) | ç |
Right Alt (Right Option) | 1 | ¡ |
Right Alt (Right Option) | / | ¿ |
Right Alt (Right Option) | s | ß |
If you are typing in Microsoft Office and do not know the shortcut keys for the accents that you need, you can insert premade symbols into your document. However, this takes time, so it is not recommeded for longer documents, where the shortcut keys (see above) will be much more efficent.
To insert symbols into Microsoft Word (Mac):
To insert symbols into Microsoft Word (Windows):
Another option is to use a keyboard layout from a country where the language is spoken. However, this method may take more time to learn where the keys are located on the new keyboard layout.
If you'd like to use a country-specific keyboard, you'll need to follow these three basic steps. See the Windows and Mac boxes below for details about how to do this on each system.
First, activate the keyboards or input methods that you want through the Control Panel:
Next, turn on the Language Bar:
Use the Language Bar to select which language you want to type in:
When using another keyboard layout, open the On-Screen Keyboard to see what characters are associated with each key:
Need help? Contact the LRC, or check out the links below for more detailed, step-by-step instructions.
First, activate the keyboards or input methods you want:
To use these keyboards:
Need help? Contact the LRC, or check out the links below for more detailed, step-by-step instructions.