Our world shrinks and our community becomes increasingly global. For those using the 26 letter (aka, US 101) keyboard, proper communications can be challenging.

Master these easy keyboard shortcuts so as not to mistake pate with pâté, fur with für, or Crème fraîche with, well, anything. 

To avoid a lot of memorization, remember: look for the key that looks like the accented character and match it with a CTRL (and sometimes SHIFT) stroke. Many of the special characters can be created by using apostrophe ( ′ ),  colon (:)  caret (^) and tilde (~).

Char

Name

Keystroke

Example

´	acute accent	CTRL + ′, followed by letter	más (Sp., more)
`	grave accent	CTRL + `, followed by letter	où (Fr., where)
¨	diaeresis/umlaut	CTRL + SHIFT + :, followed by letter	Tür (Gr., door)
^	circumflex	CTRL+ SHIFT + ^, followed by letter	tête (Fr., head)
~	tilde	CTRL + SHIFT + ~, followed by letter	Piña Colada (a dreadful 70s song)
Bonus language-specific shortcuts:
ç	(Fr.) cedilla	CTRL + , (comma), followed by c	garçon (boy)
ß	(Gr.) eszett	CTRL + SHIFT + &, followed s	groß (large)

Related

• Using Wildcards in Word
• Word Style Sets and Ligatures
• More AskQ Word Posts

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Comments and questions are always welcome!