Mac keyboard shortcuts for special characters

Question

I am able to get a diaeresis over a letter by Option+u (ë) and an acute accent by Option+e (é). Is there a keyboard shortcut to get both combined? So that the accent is over the letter with a diaeresis?

Solution 1

Under "System Preferences" > "International" > "Input Menu" check "Character Palette". This will put a menu on the menu bar with an icon of the national flag of whatever keyboard layout you are using. From that menu, you can select "Show Character Palette" and you get a window that shows all of the characters that are legitimate Unicode.

To insert a Unicode character into a text field that accepts Unicode, set your insertion point and then either double-click the character in the palette, or select the character in the palette and then click the "Insert" button.

My description comes from a computer running Mac OS X 10.5, there may be other ways to do this, but this seems easy to remember.

Note -- my suggestion doesn't seem to solve your specific diaeresis+acute over 'e' question. The closest Unicode character I see is Macron+Acute over 'e'.

Solution 2

Just found this website that has a good overview on how to insert "special" characters. http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codemacext.html

Comments

[Admin]

consider changing the question title and adding a tag which reflect the correct terminology. For example: "Mac keystrokes for special complex accented letters" and add the tags "keystrokes", "accents" or "diacritics" Keyboard shortcuts refer to a method of invoking application or system commands. Keystrokes refers to entering text by typing. I suggest this because currently this question is turned up by searches which it doesn't actually apply to.

[Doug Harris]

I agree with David's closest guess -- it's Unicode 1E17: ḗ

[user1433372]

Link is broken. Use symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/accents/codemacext.html

[user1433372]

option-e + e => é option-u + e => ë option-` + e => è