Language Accents with Mac OS X

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I can't for the life of me figure out how to put an accent on the 'e' in French for 'mange' and other accents for that language. As a recent switcher, it just doesn't work like Windows did. Can anybody help me please?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by CityGuy88

    I can't for the life of me figure out how to put an accent on the 'e' in French for 'mange' and other accents for that language. As a recent switcher, it just doesn't work like Windows did. Can anybody help me please?



    option+e, release, then the letter you want for a forward accent,



    option+`, release, then the letter you want for a backwards one.



    --B
  • Reply 2 of 6
    Hold down the option key and type an E and the without the option key pressed simply type an E and it will make an é. Is this what you're looking for?
  • Reply 3 of 6
    meelashmeelash Posts: 1,045member
    Somebody tell him how to get to KeyCaps (Sorry, "keyboard viewer" or whatever the newfangled name is ) and the Symbol viewer in the language menu.



    I'm at work and can't remember where exactly it is in System Preferences.



    I think it's like this:

    CityGuy: Search in the system preferences panel for language menu. You should find an option for showing the language menu in the taskbar (upper right corner of the screen). Click on the language menu (looks like a flag if your language is set to English) and at the bottom of the menu there are two mini-applications. The Symbol one has a ton of symbols kind of like what you have in some Windows apps.



    Keyboard viewer shows what each button of the keyboard does when pressed in the current language and font. So if you push option as was suggested you'll see that the 'e' key will change to the accent symbol. It is shaded, meaning that after pressing it the next letter pressed will have that symbol on it.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    What meelash said.



    --B
  • Reply 5 of 6
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    This really is a genuine question and not just a snide attempt to be rude:



    Why are so many people seemingly afraid of Mac Help?



    Launch Mac Help (make Finder the front-most app, go to the Help menu), type in "accent", and the top hit is "adding accent marks to characters".



    The article could be slightly clearer in stating that you don't have to launch the keyboard viewer every time you want to add an accent, you just need it if you can't remember which key does which accent. Hopefully though, that would become obvious to the user once they'd followed the article through.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    meelashmeelash Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mr. H


    This really is a genuine question and not just a snide attempt to be rude:



    Why are so many people seemingly afraid of Mac Help?



    Launch Mac Help (make Finder the front-most app, go to the Help menu), type in "accent", and the top hit is "adding accent marks to characters".



    The article could be slightly clearer in stating that you don't have to launch the keyboard viewer every time you want to add an accent, you just need it if you can't remember which key does which accent. Hopefully though, that would become obvious to the user once they'd followed the article through.



    True. I think many switchers are timid because of the quagmire one falls into trying to find stuff in most Windows based help systems. Also, if I may point out, a spotlight search is System Preferences can show the way most times....
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