Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Typing diacritical marks again

Fodor's Travel Talk Forums (https://www.fodors.com/community/)

- Europe (https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/)

- - Typing diacritical marks again (https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/typing-diacritical-marks-again-195514/)

Typing diacritical marks again

How do you type a capital "E" with accent grave in Word on a PC (i.e. the upper case version of è, which I get by holding down the "alt" key while typing "13.")? Several months ago, someone posted instructions on typing the diacritical marks, and I saved them and printed them out and keep the list near my computer at home and at work. But I'm missing that one. (This is a problem when I'm writing in Italian and the sentence starts with [it] is!) Thanks.

When typing in French on Word, I don’t use the number system for diacritical marks but rather the control key. Holding the control key down, you first type the accent mark, then release the key and type the letter. For the accent grave on my keyboard, it is the first key on the first line. For the accent aigu, it is the apostrophe. For the cedille, it is the comma. For the circonflex, it is the 6 (hold down both control key and shift). The only one I can’t get this way is the tréma (or umlaut) but that is pretty rare in French. Examples: é, è, ê, ç. On capital letters, however, I get: É, È, Ê, Ç. But if I skip a line: É, È, Ê and Ç. (In case this doesn’t come through on the Forum, looks like a dot above the first two, and two dots above the third. Seems that I am getting just the very bottom of the accent marks.) Don’t know how much this will help for Italian, but perhaps the dot would be better than nothing? P.S. That's weird! When I pasted this in from Word, all my capitals look just as they should be!

You could install the "United States-International keyboard"(software). This is easy to do through the Control Panel function in Windows 9X. Gives you access to all the Western European diacriticals. For just typing occasional Italian, though, that might be overkill. It's easier for some folks to just prepare a page with the capital and lc es with teh accent grave and just copy from that page when needed in the Italian text.

Ä = Alt 142 Å = Alt 143 Æ = Alt 146 â = Alt 131 ä = Alt 132 à = Alt 133 å = Alt 134 á = Alt 160 æ = Alt 145 ç = Alt 135 É = Alt 144 é = Alt 130 ê = Alt 136 ë = Alt 137 è = Alt 138 ƒ = Alt 159 ï = Alt 139 î = Alt 140 ì = Alt 141 í = Alt 161 Ñ = Alt 164 Ö = Alt 153 ô = Alt 147 ö = Alt 148 ò = Alt 149 ó = Alt 162 P = Alt 158 Ü = Alt 154 ü = Alt 129 û = Alt 150 ù = Alt 151 ú = Alt 163 ÿ = Alt 152 ¿ = Alt 167 ¢ = Alt 155 £ = Alt 156 ¥ = Alt 157 º = Alt 166 ñ is Alt-0241 ß is ALT 225.

"Here it is", je vous aime beaucoup! BC

Another way in Word is to use "Insert" and "Symbol" from the menus. This is particularly easy if you are doing a short document. I just use the menus for the first one and then copy and paste for any after that.

Dear "Here it is": Thanks. But I think I already have that list. It still doesn't have the E with the grave. (It has É, but I neeed the lower case of è.) I'm very non-techie, so I will get confused if I trty to do anything other than what "here it is" suggests. I got used to that system, but just need the upper case E with the accent grave (not aigu). Holding down the conntrol while typing the grave and then releasing the control and typing "e" while holding the shift produced this for me: `E `E `E How can I get the ` to be above the E, not in front of it.

I tried that international keyboard thing as I actually do write in French quite a bit, but it didn't work on my machine, it wouldn't allow it (I have Compaq PC and Windows NT system). This is the rule for È (I would add to the instructions that the NUMLOCK must be on, at least on my machine, I don't do anything with the control and shift keys, and the numbers typed are on the righthand numberic keypad, not on the line above the letters): ALT + 0200 If you forget and for tons others, this info is available in the "character map" section in Windows. To find that, either go to "help" and then type "characters" in the box and review "how to put a special character into a document" which will give you a link to the Character Map, or go into "Accessories" on your START menu, and "Character Map" will be one of the choices--this is easier if you can remember. When the Character Map opens, put your pointer on the one you want to know and the ALT+number formula will appear at the bottom right of that window.

Using the keypad with NumLock ON, Alt+0200 yields an È Alt+0232 gives an è

THANK YOU! È È È It worked. But for the lower case alt + 138 is just a bit faster. è è

To Carol: I wonder if you missed this on the "other" thread about diacritical marks. After I had assembled the list of alt-xxx combinations, Ed pointed out that I was missing ñ, which is very commonly needed in Spanish, and the only way to enter this character was using a FOUR digit entry, where a ZERO is the first of the four numeric keys to hit. Anyhow, I previously assembled this list of the FOUR digit combos, all of which begin with zero, i.e., alt-0xxx Here they are: ƒ - 0131 „ - 0132 † - 0134 ‡ - 0135 ˆ - 0136 ‰ - 0137 Š - 0138 ‹ - 0139 Œ - 0140 ‘ - 0145 ’ - 0146 “ - 0147 ” - 0148 • - 0149 ˜ - 0152 ™ - 0153 š - 0154 › - 0155 œ - 0156 Ÿ - 0159 ¡ - 0161 ¢ - 0162 £ - 0163 ¤ - 0164 ¥ - 0165 § - 0167 ¨ - 0168 © - 0169 ª - 0170 « - 0171 ® - 0174 ° - 0176 ± - 0177 ² - 0178 ³ - 0179 ´ - 0180 µ - 0181 ¶ - 0182 · - 0183 ¸ - 0184 ¹ - 0185 º - 0186 » - 0187 ¼ - 0188 ½ - 0189 ¾ - 0190 ¿ - 0191 À - 0192 Á - 0193 Â - 0194 Ã - 0195 Ä - 0196 Å - 0197 Æ - 0198 Ç - 0199 È - 0200 É - 0201 Ê - 0202 Ë - 0203 Ì - 0204 Í - 0205 Î - 0206 Ï - 0207 Ð - 0208 Ñ - 0209 Ò - 0210 Ó - 0211 Ô - 0212 Õ - 0213 Ö - 0214 × - 0215 Ø - 0216 Ù - 0217 Ú - 0218 Û - 0219 Ü - 0220 Ý - 0221 Þ - 0222 ß - 0223 à - 0224 á - 0225 â - 0227 ä - 0228 å - 0229 æ - 0230 ç - 0231 èêëìíîïðñòóôõõö÷øùúûüýþÿ - 0232-0255 One motivation I had had for doing this was hoping that I could find (for Art) the "smiley face" character(s) - - but as you can see, they are not here. Best wishes, Rex

alt + 164 = ñ alt + 165 = Ñ

Good tips. Any more? El.

what happened to this? Fodors messed it up!