In Our Words / Article

Writing Documents Using “Foreign Language” Character Sets

Part 2: European Characters in Mac OS X

By Justin Laby, Co-founder, Mouko, LLC

In part one, I discussed the various methods people use to insert non-English letters and symbols into their documents using Windows. From copy-paste to hidden menus inside of programs, people use all sorts of circuitous means to add accents and punctuation to their documents in French, Italian, German, and any other language with a Latin alphabet. This how-to will show the easiest way to insert non-English symbols into your documents on a Mac.

Using the “Option” Key

Macintoshes have had excellent support for multi-language input for many years. The method used to insert the most common accents and punctuation has not changed significantly over time. Moreover, on Macs you can insert accented letters into your document without changing your computer’s configuration in any way using the option key in combination with other keyboard sequences.

Figure 1: The Option Key

For example, the simplest way to insert vowels with forward-leaning “acute” or “aigu” accents (i.e. á, é, í, ó, ú, Á, É, Í, Ó, and Ú) is to hold down the “option” key (typically located in the bottom-left or bottom-right corner of your keyboard) and press the letter e. When you do this, an acute symbol will appear, usually either in a different color or with a line under it (see figure 2). When this symbol appears it is waiting for additional input from you. Type the vowel you wish to appear with this accent and the symbol will be replaced with your accented letter.

Figure 2: The Text Edit program waiting for input after pressing option-e

To insert a vowel with a “grave” accent (i.e. à, è, ì, ò, ù, À, È, Ì, Ò, and Ù), hold down the option key and press the back-quote character (`), which usually shares a key with the tilde (~) then press the desired vowel to insert it.

For an “umlaut,” also known as a “tréma” or “dieresis,” follow the same pattern as described above, except instead press option-u and then the intended vowel. This will yield ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ, Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü, and Ÿ. Option-i can be used to generate letters with a “circumflex” or “caret” accent, such as â, ê, î, ô, û, Â, Ê, Î, Ô and Û.

Figure 3: Inserting an acute e into TextEdit

Option-n followed by a lower- or upper-case letter n will yield the Spanish ñ and Ñ, respectively. Portuguese and other languages (such as Estonian) use vowels with tildes as well, e.g. “São Paolo,” and option-n can also be used to generate letters such as ã, õ, Ã, and Õ.

To generate the French cedille under the letter c, simply press option-c or option-C to yield ç and Ç, respectively. For the German eszet, press option-s to yield ß. Option-1 and option-? will generate ¡ and ¿. The following table summarizes the above.

Using Alternative Keyboard Layouts

As on a Windows computer, it is possible to configure your Macintosh to use a wide variety of International keyboards. To do this, you must change the settings in your “International” System Preferences. First, go to your System Preferences by going to your Apple menu and selecting “System Preferences” as shown in the below figure.

Figure 4: Launching System Preferences

Once your System Preferences have opened, select the “International” icon, which bears the flag of the United Nations, as seen in Figure 5.

Figure 5: International System Preferences

After the International control panel launches, select the “Input Menu” menu. From here, you can choose any of dozens of keyboard layouts, including those that support not only Roman, but Cyrillic, Chinese, Korean, Hebrew, and many other character sets.

Figure 6: Selecting Italian Keyboard Input

If you intend to use multiple keyboard layouts, make sure to select whether you wish to use the same input source for all open documents or have the option of using different layouts for each document. Also be sure to check the checkbox labeled “Show input menu in menu bar” if you intend to use multiple keyboard layouts. This will allow you to change your input language easily from the menu bar at any time.

Figure 7: Input Source Options

To change your input language, select the flag in the upper-right-hand corner of the menu bar, and then select your desired keyboard layout from the list. Your keyboard will then mimic the keyboard layout from the country you select.

Figure 8: Changing Keyboard Layout

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