Replacing Your Keyboard With the International Keyboard to Type In French Accents

Another alternative to try when typing a lot of accented or special ASCII characters is to set up the keyboard as an International Keyboard so you don’t have to type in lots of 3 and 4 digit memorized or looked up numbers, or use cut and paste.

Changing your keypad to International allows you to type in a symbol representing an specific accent before a letter in order to create the letter. However, this makes it more difficult to type in quotation marks ‘ ’ and " " because then you have to hit the space bar every time you want it to act like a quotation mark.

For example, the common French expression c’est can only be typed by typing c, then ‘, then space, then e s t if you change to the International Keyboard.

If you type in a lot more quotation marks than accented letters, it’s probably easier to leave your keyboard setup as is and type in the ASCII ALT codes as needed. Or you can reset your keyboard back and forth depending on what you are mostly doing.

The International Keyboard setup will allow you to make the following accents with 2 or 3 keystroke instead of 4 or 5:

é ........ type ‘ (on " keyboard key, middle-right) then e
à, è, ... type ` (on ~ keyboard key, upper-left) then vowel
ê, ô .... type ^ (on 6 keyboard key, upper-middle) then vowel
ë, ï,ü .. hold shift key and press ‘ (on " keyboard key, middle-right) then vowel

Of course, each operating system has a different way of setting up the keyboard. Once set up, the lower right corner of your desktop should have a little box telling you the keyboard that you are using is US - International.

For all Windows operating systems, start by opening the Control Panel.

This is done usually either through the Start Menu or through the My Computer icon in non-
Vista systems, and Control Panel Home in the Classic View in Vista systems.

Vista: Under Clock, Language, and Region, click Change keyboards or other input methods, click Change keyboards, click Add, scroll down to English (United States). If the list doesn’t show United States-International, click + to show full list. Pick United States-International from the list, then click OK in each dialog window.

XP: Double-click Regional and Language Options, click Languages, click Details, click Add, pick English (United States - International) under Keyboard Layout/IME and pick English (United States) under Input, click OK.

Win 95, 98, ME, NT: Double-click Keyboard, click Language, click Properties, Settings or Details (whichever one you see), click Add, pick English International or United States International, click OK.

Win 2000: Double-click Keyboard, click Input Locales, click Change, click Add, pick English International or United States International, click OK.