Multilingual computing

Accents & special characters - Windows

To type accented letters and other symbols on Windows you can use the numeric codes listed below. These should work in any program.

How it works:
To type a lower case letter with an acute accent on it (á é í ó ú) you can:

Hold down the alt key then type the numeric code on the number pad.

Codes for typing accented letters

Codes for typing other special characters

Click here to download an Excel spreadsheet of these codes

Other key combinations

Acute accent (á, é, etc): Alt Gr + letter - Alt Gr + Shift + letter for upper case
Grave accent (à, è, etc): Slant apostrophe (`) + letter - Slant apostrophe (`) + Shift + letter for upper case
Circumflex accent (â, ê, etc): press Alt Gr + 6/^ together, release, then the letter - Alt Gr + Circumflex (^) + shift + letter for upper case
Dieresis / Umlaut (ä, ë, etc): press Alt Gr + 2/" together, release, then the letter - Alt Gr + 2/" + shift + letter for upper case
Tilde (ã, õ): press Alt Gr + #/~ together, release, then the letter - Alt Gr + #/~ + shift + letter for upper case
Euro (€): press Alt Gr + 4/$

Note: the combinations work with the Welsh (United Kingdom) keyboard layout.

You can also assign requently-used letters to particular key combinations.

Links

Orthographic diacritics and multilingual computing
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/dia/diacritics-revised.htm

Typing International Accent Marks and Diacriticals
http://www.starr.net/is/type/kbh.html

International characters
http://www.lrc.salemstate.edu/keyboard.htm

Free keyboard layout for typing many European languages and Japanese rōmaji
http://goo.gl/VloRCe

Character finder - a site where you can find out which accented letters or other characters are used in which language(s), and other useful information about characters, fonts and unicode: http://transliteration.eki.ee/

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