Word: Enter diacritical characters on the keyboard
Diacritical characters as defined are used more often on your keyboard than you might think. You can easily find the usual ones in German. With some diacritical characters, however, you search in vain. This practical tip shows you how to enter these symbols in Word.
Diacritics - what is it?
- The small characters that are attached to letters of the alphabet are called diacritical marks.
- These can be points, but also lines, ticks, circles or arcs.
- These signs then indicate that a letter is pronounced differently than normal.
- In the German written language, only umlauts - i.e. ä, ö and ü - are extended by diacritical marks.
- In other languages there are significantly more diacritical marks. For example, in French there is the accent aigu, the accent grave and the accent circonflexe.
Word: Enter diacritical characters on the keyboard
Certain diacritical characters can be written in Word using keyboard shortcuts. We have summarized the most important ones for you. We only show the small spelling. You can get the capital letters as usual by pressing the Shift key.
- ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [:], then the corresponding letter.
- â, ê, î, ô, û: [^], then the corresponding letter.
- à, è, ì, ò, ù: [`], then the corresponding letter.
- á, é, í, ó, ú, ý: [´], then the corresponding letter.
- æ or œ: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [&], then a or o.
- ç: [Ctrl] + [, ], then c.
- ø: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [/], then o.
Insert diacritics as a symbol in Word
Not all diacritical characters can be inserted using key combinations. You will find numerous other symbols in the special characters.
- Select the menu item "Insert" and then click on "Symbols". You will find the icon on the far right.
- If you click on "More symbols", a window with numerous symbols opens. In the Font area select "normal text", the "Subset" on the right side set to "Extended Latin - A".
- Find the desired character from the selection and mark it by clicking on it. By clicking on "Insert" the character will be inserted into your text.
- If you need the diacritical mark more often, you can assign it with a key combination. To do this, click on the "Key combination" button before clicking "Insert". You can then define and save a key combination and thus use the keyboard to enter the character in the future.
In our next practical tip, we'll show you how to add numbers up in Word.