How do I get foreign language characters, accent marks, and diacriticals on a Mac?
Answer
All foreign language characters, accent marks, and diacriticals are built-in to the normal English keyboard and can be accessed with combinations of the Option key (lower left or lower right) and other keys. Some key combinations create the diacritical (e.g. acute, grave, circumflex, tilde, or umlaut,) and then you press the key for the character that you want it to appear over.
For example,
Opt-a = å
Opt-e+e = é
Opt-i+i = î (Opt-i+e = ê, etc)
Opt-o = ø
Opt-u+o = ö (Opt-u+u = ü, etc)
Opt-`+e = è (Opt-`+a = à, etc)
Opt-q = œ
Opt-‘ = æ
Opt-c = ç
Opt-n+n = ñ
Opt-s = ß
Opt-1 = ¡
Opt-? = ¿ (This requires Opt-Shift-?)