French accents: choosing and typing é, è, ê, ç and œ
When copying a French word, its accents belong to its spelling. Typing cafe is not an exact copy of café. This guide pairs characters with practice words and shows how to enter them using the French keyboard.
Match the character to the word
| Character | Practice words | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| é | café, été | The acute mark rises to the right. |
| è | très, mère | The grave mark points the other way. |
| ê | fête, fenêtre | Choose the letter with the circumflex. |
| à ù | à, où | Keep the grave mark in the spelling. |
| ç | français, garçon | The cedilla sits below c. |
| ë ï | Noël, naïf | Use the character with two dots. |
| œ | cœur, sœur | A single ligature, not two separately typed letters. |
These examples are for spelling practice, not a complete pronunciation guide. For a new word, check a dictionary rather than assigning a sound from the mark alone.
Keep accents on capital letters
The Académie française advises retaining required accents on capitals. On Phonokey, hold Shift when clicking a letter, or turn on the ⇧ toggle, to enter forms such as É and Ç. Turn the toggle off when you return to lower case.
Type café, then mère
- Open the French keyboard and type caf in the editor.
- Click é. The character goes at the caret, so first check that the caret is at the end.
- Use Copy all and paste the word into your document.
With the default shortcut setting, Ctrl+E inserts é. Repeating the same shortcut immediately cycles through è, ê and ë. To practice mère, type m, press Ctrl+E twice, then type re. Moving the caret or typing another character starts a new sequence. Hover over a button to check its shortcut.
Quotation marks and ligatures
The French « and » buttons include a nonbreaking space on the inside of the quotation. A visible space after pasting is therefore not necessarily a mistake. If a form rejects a name containing œ or an accented letter, consult that form's instructions instead of silently changing the original spelling.
Check the destination as well
Paste into a second app if a character appears as a square. If only one destination fails, its font may be the problem. See copying, fonts and combining characters for a diagnosis, or the operating-system input guide for ways to enter accents outside Phonokey.