OS X - Typing Accented Letters

Typing Accented Letters and other Foreign Characters

See below for instructions on how to type non-English characters while using the standard U.S. English keyboard layout on Mac OSX.

The following tables show sample characters, along with the keyboard shortcuts used to type them using the standard U.S. keyboard layout. The same content is also available as a PDF.

Accented Letters

The symbol "V" below means any vowel. To use the keyboard shortcuts, hold down Option, press the second key, and release both before typing the desired vowel. Hold down the Shift key when typing the vowel if a capital letter is needed.

Accent	Example	Keyboard Shortcut	Notes
Acute	ó Ó	Option+E, V
Circumflex	ô Ô	Option+I, V
Grave	ò Ò	Option+`, V
Tilde	õ Õ	Option+N, V	Only with "n,N,o,O,a,A"
Umlaut	ö Ö	Option+U, V

Other Foreign Characters

To insert these characters, press hold down the Option key, and the Shift key if required, and then press the letter or symbol key indicated in the Keyboard Shortcut column. To produce an uppercase symbol, hold down the Shift key when typing the key combination.

Character	Name	Keyboard Shortcut
¡	Beginning exclamation mark	Option+1
¿	Beginning question mark	Shift+Option+?
Ç,ç	French C cedille	Option+C
Œ,œ	OE ligature	Option+Q
ß	German Sharp/Double S	Option+S
º, ª	Masculine Ordinal Number (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese), Feminine Ordinal Number	Option+0 Option+9
Ø,ø	Nordic O slash	Option+O
Å,å	Nordic A ring	Option+A
Æ,æ	AE ligature	Option+' (apostrophe key)
« »	Spanish/French quotation marks	Option+\

Currency Symbols

To insert these characters, hold down the Option key, and the Shift key if required, and then press the other key.

Character	Name	Keyboard Shortcut
¢	Cent sign	Option+4
£	British Pound	Option+3
¥	Japanese Yen	Option+Y
€	Euro Sign.	Shift+Option+2 May not be in older fonts.
ƒ	Dutch Florin	Option+F