Being bilingual, English and French (bonjour les amies!), I occasionally have a need to type in French. Although the French alphabet is very similar to the English one, there are certain characters in French that may require accented versions of the characters. The problem is, I don't always have a French keyboard layout available. The good news is that there is an alternative. 

French accented characters can however be entered using something called ALT codes. While holding down the ALT key, type the three or four digits number as it appears below. When you release the ALT key, the character will appear.

DescriptionLowercaseCodeUppercaseCode
a with grave accent à ALT + 133 ÀALT + 0192
a with circumflexâALT + 131ÂALT + 0194
a with trémaäALT + 132Ä ALT + 142
a e ligatureæALT + 145ÆALT + 146
c with cedillaçALT + 135ÇALT + 128
e with acute accentéALT + 130ÉALT + 144
e with grave accentèALT + 138ÈALT + 0200
e with circumflexêALT + 136ÊALT + 0202
e with trémaëALT + 137ËALT + 0203
i with circumflexîALT + 140ÎALT + 0206
i with trémaïALT + 139 ÏALT + 0207
o with circumflexôALT + 147ÔALT + 0212
o e ligatureœALT + 0156ŒALT + 0140
u with grave accentùALT + 151ÙALT + 0217
u with circumflexûALT + 150ÛALT + 0219
u with trémaüALT + 129ÜALT + 154
French quotation marks«ALT + 174»ALT + 175
Euro symbol€ALT + 0128Not really a French character

Additonal Reference: Common HTML Character Codes

Happy computing!

                    Michael

Related Posts: