26 Mar 2007

Typing Curly Quotes, Accents, etc. In OS X

I like to use typographically correct punctuation (curly/‘smart’ quotes and the right dashes), but typing symbols can be a pain. Yeah, you can let Word’s AutoFormat guess what you’re trying to do, like an invisible Clippy sharing your keyboard, but when it screws up you’ll soon find yourself wanting to break things.

Luckily, OS X makes typing common symbols and accented characters reasonably easy using the Option key (Apple, please sort out the confusing naming/labelling of Option and Command):

Quotes

“	double quote open	option [
”	double quote close	shift option [
‘	single quote open	option ]
’	single quote close	shift option ]

Dashes

–	en dash	option -
—	em dash	shift option -

Accents

After pressing the key combination for the accent, release and then press the letter you want to apply the accent to.

´	acute	option e
`	grave	option `
^	circumflex	option i
~	tilde	option n
¨	umlaut	option u

Currency

On UK keyboards £ and # are reversed, hence the oft-heard cries of “How do I type a bloody hash symbol?!” amongst new Mac users over here. Euro and trademark are also swapped round.

£	pound	option 3 UK: shift 3
€	euro	shift option 2 UK: option 2
¢	cent	option 4
¥	yen	option y

Misc. symbols

…	ellipsis	option ;
©	copyright	option g
®	registered	option r
™	trademark	option 2 UK: shift option 2
°	degree	shift option 8
·	middle dot	shift option 9

To browse other key combinations, use Tiger’s built-in Keyboard Viewer.