Differences between the UK Default and International Keyboards Here’s an overview of the differences and a quick reference for accessing the accented letters on the International keyboard and also a few other suggestions that make writing in French on a QWERTY keyboard more manageable. Since I’m talking about Windows here, we’ll skip right over this and go back to the International keyboard layout as I think that’s the most accessible of the three options for Windows users. It’s less cumbersome on a MAC because that also gives you a visual keyboard option (this may exist for Windows, but if so I haven’t found it – yet). This isn’t so easy to use on a QWERTY keyboard unless you have excellent visual memory because the layout is very different. I have a printed list of the ANSI codes – and sometimes they are useful – but since I installed the International keyboard I am using them less and less.įinally, you can install the French (of French Canadian) keyboard, which uses the AZERTY layout. This method is relatively simple once you’ve got the keyboard set up. There’s a small learning curve but no long term memory demands. The second way involves installing the US or UK International Keyboard and using this in place of your US or UK default. LetterĪccented Character & ASCII (Lowercase) CodeĪccented Character & ANSI (Uppercase) CodeĪnother useful code is for the Euro currency symbol (Alt+0128).Īnd advantage of knowing the ANSI codes is they will work on ANY system: Windows, Mac, etc. If you want to give them a try you can use the list shown in the table below. These codes can seem laborious to learn at first but, as a tech writer (by trade), I’m a big fan of these they’re the only way to program special characters into FrameMaker template headings and in non-WYSIWYG coding tools with the benefit that if you programme the ANSI code you know it’s going to come out right at the other end. For example, press Alt and type 0181 and the micro character, “µ”, is displayed. These are basically a combinations of machine-readable codes that anyone who’s worked with HTML will probably have come across already, and usually involve a combination of keys, such as Alt or Alt+Shift and a three- or four-digit number. One way is to become familiar with the ASCII or ANSI codes for each accented letter or symbol. Three Ways to Type French Accented Characters In this post I’ll describe three different workarounds that will make it much easier to find the accents you need. But what if you do find you need them? Maybe you’re studying French or resident there, or a native French speaker stuck with a QWERTY system. Since that keyboard is designed around the frequency of letters and characters used in English (and there are some US and UK differences, in the main they are the same) obviously there’s unlikely to be any reason to access the many accented letters used in the French alphabet. In systems set up for French speakers, its far simpler because they have a AZERTY keyboard, which gives quick access to the characters and symbols that are needed.įor English-speakers, our systems are shipped by default with a QWERTY keyboard – so called because the first six characters on the keyboard are Q-W-E-R-T and Y. The main advantage of the ISO layout is the alt graph key, which stands for alternate graphic, can let you access symbols not easily accessible, like currency symbols, Latin letters, and other symbols that are otherwise inaccessible from a regular keyboard, similar to how you can hold down shift to access the dollar sign.If you’re using a computer designed for the English-speaking market, be that US, International or English-English, it can be a challenge to type French accented characters. So which layout should you use? Well, that question is hard to answer since there is no inherently better layout, and each layout does have its advantages. Number of KeysĪnd lastly, the number of keys is also different between layouts, the full ANSI layout is 104 keys, while the compact version has 87 keys, on the other hand, the ISO layout has one more key with 105 keys for the full layout, and 88 keys for the compact version. The backslash key is also one of the biggest differences between the layouts since the ANSI backslash is located above the return key and about the size of one and a half keys, while the ISO backslash is regular-sized, and located to the left of the return key.
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