If you don’t have a specialized keyboard, you must do extra work to type letters with accent marks like latté, Bogotá, Frappé, etc in your document. To help you, this article explains how to put an accent over letter characters with Word, keyboard shortcuts, ASC11 code, and lots more. Carefully read through!
Table of contents
How To Insert Accented Letters With Word’s Insert Function
If you want to input accented characters on your document, you need to launch Microsoft Word’s Symbol box and search for the required letter.
Go to the “Insert” tab, and then tap the “Advanced Symbol” or “Symbol” button.
The latest version of Word will speedily open the symbol window while older versions will show a dropdown menu of the most recent symbols used. If the symbol you are looking for is there, click to input it into your document. If you can’t find it, tap the “More Symbols” button, instead.
After clicking the more symbols button, the window that opens shows about 3,633 characters to choose from. You can go on to filter by font and subset.
To filter by font, click the “Font” dropdown menu and select the font. For the subset, click the “Subset” dropdown and choose the particular subsets of characters.
You can see the Subset value change as you navigate the available characters. For the time being, select “Latin-1 Supplement” from the “Subset” menu. That’s where you’ll probably locate the accented letter you’re looking for.
Click the character you want to include in your document, then click the “Insert” button. While you’re here, take note of the other relevant symbols in this window. The copyright () and registered trademark (®) characters can be seen in the image below.
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How To Put An Accent Over A Letter With Keyboard Shortcuts
If you want to know how to put an accent over a letter with keyboard shortcuts, you may have noticed that the “More symbols” screen also tells you what the shortcut key is for in that character.
These shortcuts follow a particular formula, so needless to try to master all the shortcuts. You can tap Ctrl or Shift key along with the accent key on your keyboard, followed by a long fast press of the letter.
For instance, to get the á character, you’d press Ctrl+’ (apostrophe), remove your hand from those keys, and then speedily press the A key. If you want Á instead of á, you need to click caps lock before using the shortcut key. This is because using the Shift key would alter the shortcut.
Tthe table below outlines te code for the various symbols.
Symbol | Code |
à, è, ì, ò, ù | Ctrl+` (Accent Grave), the letter |
À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù | |
á, é, í, ó, ú | Ctrl+’ (Apostrophe), the letter |
Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú | |
â, ê, î, ô, û | Ctrl+Shift+^ (Caret), the letter |
Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û | |
ã, ñ, õ | Ctrl+Shift+~ (Tilde), the letter |
Ã, Ñ, Õ | |
ä, ë, ï, ö, ü | Ctrl+Shift+: (Colon), the letter |
Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü |
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How To Insert Accented Characters With ASCII Codes
Here is the geekiest approach of all. If you’re utilizing many accented characters, especially the same ones, it will be nice if you learn a few ASCII codes.
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is an encoding scheme that permits specific characters to be represented by a code.
To use the ASCII codes, you need a number of pad (either your main keyboard or an add-on). Additionally, you also need to enable NumLock by pressing the NumLock key at the top-left corner of your number pad. Most keyboards usually have an indicator that shows the NumLock is enabled.
To enter an ASCII code, press and hold the Alt key while typing a numeric code on your number pad. For instance, the code for the lowercase letter “a” with a grave accent 133. So you would hold down Alt, key in 133, and then release Alt. When you do, the character appears—there it is!
Here are a few ASCII codes you can master to get you started:
Code | Symbol | Description |
129 | ü | letter u with umlaut |
130 | é | letter e with acute accent |
131 | â | letter a with circumflex accent |
132 | ä | letter a with umlaut |
133 | à | letter a with grave accent |
134 | å | letter a with a ring |
136 | ê | letter e with circumflex accent |
137 | ë | letter e with umlaut |
138 | è | letter e with grave accent |
139 | ï | letter i with umlaut |
140 | î | letter i with circumflex accent |
141 | ì | letter i with grave accent |
142 | Ä | letter A with umlaut |
143 | Å | letter A with a ring |
144 | É | letter E with acute accent |
147 | ô | letter o with circumflex accent |
148 | ö | letter o with umlaut |
149 | ò | letter o with grave accent |
150 | û | letter u with circumflex accent |
151 | ù | letter u with grave accent |
152 | ÿ | letter y with diaeresis |
153 | Ö | letter O with umlaut |
154 | Ü | letter U with umlaut |
160 | á | letter a with acute accent |
161 | í | letter i with acute accent |
162 | ó | letter o with acute accent |
163 | ú | letter u with acute accent |
164 | ñ | letter n with tilde |
AutoCorrect Keyboard Characters To Special Characters
You can put an accent over a character using the autocorrect feature. All you need to do is insert the accented characters when you type the letter combinations.
To get on with it, go to the Symbols window, select the character you want to set up an autocorrect feature on, then click the AutoCorrect button at the bottom left.
After that, enter the characters you want to be replaced by autocorrect in the “Replace” box. When you’re finished, click the “Add” button, followed by the “OK” button.
In this scenario, we’re instructing Word that when we input the letter “a” followed by the accent grave (‘) and a space, Word should replace it with an “a” with the accent grave above it.
When you type a word, you must first key in the accented character. For instance, if you want to type “Voilà,” you must first type a+’ and then go back and type the “Viol” behind it.
If you fail to do it that way, there will be no changes, and you will end up with Viola. This is because Word doesn’t function without commands.
And you’re still typing almost as much as you would if you used the built-in keyboard shortcuts in Word.
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How To Put An Accent Over A Letter On PC
Here are various ways you can put an accent over a letter on PC.
1. Try shortcut keys
Most modern PCs that run Microsoft Word provide shortcut keys. They are quicker and easier to remember than using ASCII code to make accents.
2. Press Control + `, plus the letter to add a grave accent
Click the accent key near the top left corner of your keypad while holding down the Control key. Remove your hand from the keys. Then select the letter you want to accent. Typically, the accent key is on the same key as the ~.
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3. Press Control + ‘, plus the letter to create an acute accent
Hold down Control and then press the apostrophe key. The apostrophe is located next to the enter key. After that, remove your hand from the keys. Then select the letter you want to accent.
4. Press Control, Shift, 6, then the letter to add a circumflex accent
Hold down the Control and Shift keys before pressing the 6 key. Remove your hand from the keys and choose the appropriate letter. Because of the character appearing above the number, the 6 key is used.
5. Press and hold Shift + Control + ~, then the letter to add a tilde accent
The tilde is the exact key that is used to form the grave accent. If you don’t hold down the Shift key, you’ll get a grave accent instead. After releasing the keys, select the desired letter.
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6. Press Shift + Control + :, then the letter to add an umlaut accent
The colon key is following the apostrophe key. Hold down the Shift key to choose the colon rather than the semicolon. Let go of the keys. Now choose the letter.
Can I Copy And Paste Accents Over A Letter?
If you find it difficult to put an accent via Word or use any of the methods shared above, you can simply copy and paste accents over a letter. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: Get familiar with your accents first
To ensure you put the right accent over a word, you must learn the different accents. Any misplaced placement of accents will give the word a different meaning.
Let’s look at a list of common accents used by most European languages:
- Acute accents – á, é, í, ó, ú, ý
- Tilde accents – ñ, õ, ã
- Grave accents – à, è, ì, ò, ù
- Umlaut accents – ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ
- Circumflex accents – â, ê, î, ô, û
Step 2: Pick an example of the letter you want to accent
You can get a text from an existing text file, your computer’s character map or viewer program, or by searching the internet. If you use your search engine to look up a term with an accent, you should be able to copy a sample of the full word rapidly.
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Step 3: Highlight and copy the selected letter or word
To highlight the selected letter or word, right-click on your PC to copy the text. Press Command + C to copy if you are using a Mac device.
Step 4: Paste the accented word into your text
If you’re using a Mac, right-click and choose “paste and match style” if you want the accent or accented word to match the rest of your text. For those using a PC, highlight the word after pasting it and alter the font to match the rest of your document.
If you don’t usually use accents or want a quick answer, this can be the most efficient way to make accents quickly.
FAQs On How To Put An Accent Over A Letter
Press and hold the Alt key on your keyboard. While holding the Alt key, press the character’s alt code.
Windows 10 makes it much easy to enter accent characters. Right-click the taskbar and select the Show touch keyboard button to enable it. The system tray will now have a keyboard button. Click it to bring up the keyboard, then click and hold on a character to see its accent variants.
Accent marks are symbols placed over letters, most typically vowels, to help emphasize how a word is spoken.
You can put an accent over a character using the autocorrect feature. All you need to do is insert the accented characters when you type the letter combinations.
Conclusion
If you want to make typing accent much easier, it’s advised you use a specialized keyboard. This will help you put an end to the stress of typing words like doppelgänger, jalapeño, déjà vu, and résumé
References
- howtogeek.com – How to Type Accent Marks Over Letters in Microsoft Word
- simuldocs.com – How to add Accent Marks over letters in Microsoft Word
- wikihow.com – How to Put Accents on Letters