Typing French Accents On Your Computer

The French language uses accent or diacritical marks to change the pronunciation of certain letters. There are four accent marks used with vowels and one with a consonant. They are:

• Accent aigu (acute accent) – This accent can only be used with an E and is written as é.

• Accent grave (grave accent) – This accent can be used with A, E or U and is written à, è and ù.

• Accent circonflexe (circonflex) – This accent can be on an A, E, I, O or U. It is written â, ê, î, ô, and û.

• Accent tréma (umlaut) – This accent is used on E, I or U. It is written ë , ï and ü.

• Cédilla (cedilla) – This accent is found only on the letter C and is written ç.

When typing in French, whether in a letter or making entries to your genealogy program, typing in the accented letters makes your spelling correct.

On a Windows PC the accented letters may be typed in by using a combination of the ALT key and a number code. Hold the ALT key down while typing in the code. The number code must be typed using the keypad not the top row of the keyboard. The following chart shows the number code for the accented letter. Codes for capital letters have been included although these are commonly left unaccented.

TABLE 1
ACCENT CODES FOR A WINDOWS PC

There are other number combinations that will produce the same results. For instance the combination ALT-0225 may be used instead of ALT-133 to produce á. This is mentioned in case you are using a different set of codes and may think the ones above are incorrect.

If you are using a Macintosh computer you also have access to the accented letters. With a Mac, you must use the Option key in conjunction with a two letter sequence. Hold the Option key down while typing the first letter of the sequence, then release the option key before typing the second letter. The exception to this is the cédilla (ç) which only requires holding the option key while typing the letter c. The following table lists the codes for the accented letters.

TABLE 2
ACCENT CODES FOR MACINTOSH COMPUTERS