Different strokes for different folks

Foreign phrases dropped into the body of an otherwise English language document will often require the odd accent. I can never remember the key strokes needed and after several misguided attempts at various key combinations resorted to printing out this ready reckoner:

alt key + ` followed by e or a = è or à
alt key + i followed by i,a or o = î, â or ô
alt key + c = ç
alt key + e followed by e = é
alt key + q = œ

I recently came across Le Notepad, a little javascript application that lets you type in your prose selecting the necessary accented letters from a panel. The resulting text can simply be cut and pasted into your Word or Quark document. Magnifique!

It comes courtesy of Carol Reitan, a French instructor based at City College San Francisco.