Learn the essential codes and keyboard shortcuts to achieve accentuated capitals in Windows.
Putting accents on upper case letters, or typing special characters in upper case on Windows is a real pain. Unlike macOS, where all you need to do is activate the Caps Lock key to accents the caps, Windows forces the user to do some funny gymnastics.
If there are software patches to compensate for this cruel lack, it is also possible to quickly type the accented capitals by learning the right shortcuts. Several methods exist.
The first is to use ASCII codes, a computer character encoding standard born in the 1960s that allows different characters to be displayed by combining the Alt key with a number.
- É: Alt + 144 or Alt + 0201
- È: Alt + 212 or Alt + 0200
- To: Alt + 183 or Alt + 0192
- Ç: Alt + 128 or Alt + 0199
Unfortunately, if the use of these codes is possible on a keyboard having a numeric keypad, the method cannot be used on keyboards which do not have one, which is particularly the case with many portable machines.
The second method, which should work on all keyboards, allows you to type accentuated capitals using a combination of two shortcuts.
The first is used to define the accent, the second to enter the capital letter.
- É: Ctrl + 4 then Shift + E
- È: Ctrl + Alt + 7 then Shift + E
- To: Ctrl + Alt + 7 then Shift + A
- Ç: Ctrl +, (comma) then Shift + C
The use of the 4, 7 and comma keys obviously seems to have a logical explanation. Each of them allows you to enter a character (apostrophe, inverted apostrophe and comma) which could define the direction or the position of the accent to be added on the capital letter.
Be careful, however, some shortcuts may not work in all applications, some already have a shortcut using the same keys.
If it works fine in Word, the shortcut Ctrl + 4 followed by Shift + E will not display an accented E in a web browser window where the shortcut Ctrl + 4 is already used to switch to the fourth open tab.
When the above shortcuts don’t work on your machine (most likely for É and Ç), you have one ultimate solution: use the Character Map.
You will then only have to copy and paste the accented character in upper case, which is certainly more tedious, but will prove to be useful as a last resort.
To open it, just click on the Windows Start menu, and search for Character Map.