The Tips - Mac Kung Fu - page 122

Type Diacritical Characters
Here are a variety of ways to type the occasional non-English language char-
acter or symbol into text using the majority of word processors and editors.
Note that this tip assumes a U.S. English keyboard is being used.
Using the Characters Palette
In most text-editing applications, you can click Edit→Special Characters (or
hit OPTION + COMMAND + T ) to bring up the Characters palette, from which you can
choose non-English letters or symbols by selecting the Latin entry from the
list on the left (in Microsoft Word, click Insert→Symbol, or Insert→Symbol→
Symbol Browser in Word 2011). Double-click the letter to insert it into the
text.
Pressing and Holding
Another technique that works with some built-in Mac apps, like TextEdit and
Mail, is to simply hold down the standard English version of the key for a few
seconds. Doing this will cause a pop-out menu of accented variations to
appear, and you can use the Left/Right cursor keys to move the selection
highlight between them, hitting RETURN or the Down cursor key to insert the
one you need. You can also simply type the number that appears beneath
the character in the pop-out window to insert it immediately.
To insert é, for example, just press and hold E , and then select é from the
pop-out menu. For uppercase variations, just hold SHIFT plus the key in
question.
Typing Manually
However, you can also type the more commonly encountered foreign-language
characters on standard English Mac keyboards as follows (the following should
work in virtually all Mac apps):
• Acute accent: Hit OPTION + E and then type the letter. For example, for café,
type c, a, f, OPTION + E , e. Hold SHIFT when typing the letter to add accents
to uppercase letters.
• Cedilla: OPTION + C . For example, for façade, type f, a, OPTION + C , a, d, e. For
an uppercase version, hold SHIFT .
• Common ligatures: For œ, hit OPTION + Q . For æ, type OPTION + ' (that is, the
apostrophe key). In both cases, hold SHIFT for uppercase versions. For
example, to type œvere, type OPTION + Q , v, e, r, e.