Hold down any letter with alternatives and a pop-over appears for selection. You can also click keys to put them into the current program at the text-insertion point. Hold down Option, Shift, and Option-Shift to preview what characters result. Then you can select Keyboard Viewer from a strange little system menu bar item, which has a Command key in it. You can also pull up Keyboard Viewer (the modern equivalent of Key Caps for old timers) by going to the Keyboard system preferences pane, and checking Show Keyboard, Emoji, & Symbol Viewers in Menu Bar. Keyboard Viewer lets you preview and type characters.
Some third-party keyboards expose these as reminders I have a Matias Quiet Pro keyboard, which has all the alternatives printed on keys, but as a long-time touch typist, I never look at the keys, so it’s not that useful. See also my article about typing accents and other special characters on iPads and iPhones.Apple has long hidden this wealth of diacritical marks and other special characters as keyboard extras-if you knew the right keys to press. Get to 10.5 if on a G5 machine, 10.6 otherwise. If you are on 10.4, it’s time to upgrade. If you are on 10.5, you’ll find the controls for turning on the Keyboard Viewer and the Character Viewer under “International” in the System Preferences.
UPDATE: this is all very nice if you are using a Mac with OS X 10.6 or higher. Perfect for typing “hasta mañana,” a great way to end. So, you type Option-n, then let go, then “n” again, and you get…
That’s because it doesn’t work on the vowels. You might have noticed that I did not use the Option-n combination yet. Or “Löwenbräu” (and you might– there’s a recession on, you know). Especially if you need to properly type “résumé” (and you might– there’s a recession on you know). If you keep the option key down, and then type one of those keys, and then you let go, and then you type a vowel (usually) you will get a special character, along these lines: When you hold the Option key by itself it shows you those five orange keys. And there’s our upside-down question mark: Option-Shift-question mark. If you’ve ever wanted to type an Apple logo, now you know: it’s Option-Shift-K. Turns out they do other other different things when you hold Option AND Shift at the same time. The keys do different things when you hold down Shift, and they do other different things when you hold down Option. If you think about the Option key as being something like a shift key, you’d be on the right track. You can type that upside-down question mark using Option-1. You can type a cent sign (¢) with Option-4.
Now you know how to type a perfect bullet: Option-8. Ignoring for the time being the orange keys, look at all of the other great stuff in there. Here, the shift key is down, so both shift keys on the screen are highlighted.Ĥ. Notice, by the way, that when you press a key on the keyboard it changes what you see in the Keyboard viewer. You already knew that you would get capital letters if you held down the Shift key. Try holding down the shift key on your real keyboard. Click the Keyboard & Character Viewer icon in the menu bar and choose “ Show Keyboard Viewer.” Now you see a representation of your keyboard. Check the box that says “Show Keyboard & Character Viewer in menu bar.”Ĭlose up System Preferences and look in your menu bar for a new icon. Go to System Preferences and click on Keyboard.Ģ. Here’s how you can learn for yourself where the special characters are.ġ. You could memorize everything but that’s no fun. I wrote about typing Spanish and French accents on an iPhone or iPad in a separate article. We’ll have you typing all kinds of groovy accents and symbols and other neat stuff in no time. Either way, if you’re using a Mac, this is the article for you. Ever try to type “¡Olé!,” with the accent and (and the proper punctuation) but all you could get was “Ole”? Maybe you’d like to type “❼ómo estás?” but can’t figure out how to put in the accents or the upside-down question mark.