# accent marks over letters in Scrivener



## beccaprice (Oct 1, 2011)

I want to have a character named Melusine - but there's an accent mark ' over the first e, if I'm doing it correctly. - I'm not sure how to get that in Scrivener, and I'm not sure whether that accent mark will translate to mobi or epub. I don't want there to be one of those funny symbols in place of the accented e - I'll use the name without the accent if I have to, but I'd rather use it if I can without risking messing things up.


----------



## jsparks (May 18, 2013)

I don't know how to do it on american keyboards, but I have a character with an accented name and I find I forget the accent sometimes. So when I'm done with a story I usually go to find and replace and replace all instances of Jose with José. I'm thinking this would work just as well for Mélusine. Just copy this when you need it and replace it everywhere with the click of a mouse. 

ETA: I don't get funny symbols on export


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

On Mac, option+command+t or 'Edit>Special Characters', then go to 'Latin' for letters, scroll down to select the 'special letters' you want. You can drag the letters you select in 'favourites' so you can find them easier. I have ellipsis, m-dash, and all vowels with accents and umlauts in my favourites.

Edit: the accents are seamlessly integrated in the epub/mobi compilations.


----------



## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

On a Mac, just press and hold the letter. After a few seconds you'll get a small popup with all the accents available and you can pick the one you want.No need to remember complex option-shift-command-whatever sequences.


----------



## Gina Black (Mar 15, 2011)

Tim_A said:


> On a Mac, just press and hold the letter. After a few seconds you'll get a small popup with all the accents available and you can pick the one you want.No need to remember complex option-shift-command-whatever sequences.


OMG this is so cool! I had no idea and I've had Macs since the dark ages. I knew I could do it on the iPad but not the Air or Pro. Thank you!!


----------



## beccaprice (Oct 1, 2011)

I use a PC, but I'll try that Mac trick - thank you all!


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

Tim_A said:


> On a Mac, just press and hold the letter. After a few seconds you'll get a small popup with all the accents available and you can pick the one you want.No need to remember complex option-shift-command-whatever sequences.


Cool, didn't know that. Thanks, I use a lot of accents...


----------



## Maggie Dana (Oct 26, 2011)

Gina Black said:


> OMG this is so cool! I had no idea and I've had Macs since the dark ages. I knew I could do it on the iPad but not the Air or Pro. Thank you!!


I've been on a Mac since BEFORE the dark ages and this is news to me. Whoopeee !!!!!!! Am now off to investigate.

Love your covers, Gina.


----------



## Vivienne Mathews (May 7, 2013)

On a PC, use the ASCII code 138 (hold down Alt while typing 138, then release). I use a fair amount of ASCII codes and have never had a problem with them during conversion. Hope that helps!


----------



## Guest (Oct 6, 2013)

You can also save a lot of keystrokes by setting up optional autocorrect for the spellchecker. For example, there's a city in my novel called _Ekendoré_, but when I type _Ekendore _without the accent and hit the space bar, etc, it automatically changes it. Big time saver.


----------



## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

It is hit or miss whether that symbol with the accent will translate to various formats or devices or not.  Trust me on this!


André


----------



## Writer1000 (Jul 28, 2013)

Tim_A said:


> On a Mac, just press and hold the letter. After a few seconds you'll get a small popup with all the accents available and you can pick the one you want.No need to remember complex option-shift-command-whatever sequences.


Thank you!


----------



## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

AndreSanThomas said:


> It is hit or miss whether that symbol with the accent will translate to various formats or devices or not. Trust me on this!


Yeah. I try to keep special characters to HTML codes, so I don't do them in Scrivener or the originating text doc. (Although I think ePub requires a character set that deals with most special characters. That makes a huge difference for how it translates, because it's going from a more universal standard to whatever the user is using, unlike word processed files.)

If I ever do my Chinese Menu book, though, I'll have to play with this.

Camille


----------



## antares (Feb 13, 2011)

beccaprice said:


> I want to have a character named Melusine - but there's an accent mark ' over the first e, if I'm doing it correctly. - I'm not sure how to get that in Scrivener, and I'm not sure whether that accent mark will translate to mobi or epub. I don't want there to be one of those funny symbols in place of the accented e - I'll use the name without the accent if I have to, but I'd rather use it if I can without risking messing things up.


I see that you use PC Scrivener. So do I. Here is how I get letters with diacritical marks (accent, circumflex, umlaut):

I click the Edit menu. At the bottom of the Edit menu, I select Character Map. A small window pops up with the character map. In order, I select 1) my font, 2) the character I want, then I click 3) Select, and 4) Copy. Then I close the pop-up or navigate back to the -- I don't know what it is called -- the window I write in and paste the character into place.

In other words, writing non-standard characters in PC Scrivener is like doing a tonsillectomy through the rectum.

Hint: Once I have written the word or name I want to my satisfaction, copy and paste it into a research document. Then I can copy and paste it anywhere else I want it with a minimum of hassle.

Hope this helps.


----------



## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Thanks for that, Antares! Scrivener for PC is so different than for Mac, and half the time people's tips and tricks don't work. The character map also gives you the key strokes to type something in, so there's that. What I'd done for a character name was to type it in Word, select the character I needed to change, then copied it and pasted it into Scrivener where it was needed (find and replace). Took a while, but it got done. Note to self:  just name people Bob.


----------



## MClayton (Nov 10, 2010)

Vivienne Mathews said:


> On a PC, use the ASCII code 138 (hold down Alt while typing 138, then release). I use a fair amount of ASCII codes and have never had a problem with them during conversion. Hope that helps!


Thanks for this! You can also insert it from Insert>Symbols under Font: Normal text, Subset: Latin-1 Supplement. But your way is faster!


----------



## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

You can change your keyboard layout in Windows regardless of your physical keyboard (in 10 you can then toggle back and forth very easily with an icon in the tray). https://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-your-keyboard-layout-windows-10

Change it to a Spanish layout and you'll get a dead key. It's on the right hand side of the "P" (it's {[ on the US English layout). Press that, then press the letter you want accented. The alphabets will all be the same, but some of the other keys will have different functions now. There are other layouts that give you these too (there's a US-International one that many people like), but I can't tell you how since I don't use them. If you like a different layout to use all the time, Amazon sells stickers you can put on the keys.


----------



## Linn (Feb 2, 2016)

Tim_A said:


> On a Mac, just press and hold the letter. After a few seconds you'll get a small popup with all the accents available and you can pick the one you want.No need to remember complex option-shift-command-whatever sequences.


Wow, that's cool! Add me to the list of long time Mac users who didn't know about this. In the past I had to google a word with the accented letter I wanted, then copy/paste that letter into my document.


----------

