How to Type Accented Characters in Linux

You may wonder how to type accented characters in Linux. Fortunately, it’s easy to do so with a keystroke or a character map application.

Accented Characters and Unicode

Likewise other modern operating systems, Linux is able to use accented characters because it supportsUnicode.

Unicode arose as more people with languages other than American English started to use computers. Many languages have characters with diacritical marks. ASCII didn’t have a way to represent them on the computer.

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Unicode solves this problem by defining character sets withcode pointsfor each character.Unicode also made emojis possible and has changed the way we communicate, though this wasn’t an original design decision.

Using the Ctrl + Shift + U Key Combination

you may type accented characters immediately by usingCtrl + Shift + Ukeystrokes.

To do this, hold down those keys, followed by the code point number that you want to type. You can insert any code point you want, even emojis.

Accented characters on Spanish textbook

you could find the list of Unicode code points online, including onWikipedia, for all the character sets. You might want to memorize the ones you use frequently.

Using a Character Map

If you don’t want to constantly search online for any characters you use or type keystrokes, you can use a character map application.

KDE Plasma and GNOME offer character map applications. They work similarly to ones you may have used on macOS or Windows. you may search for characters and then copy and paste them into where you want your text to go. They will often display the character combination for characters you would want to memorize.

GNOME Characters application

If you don’t have one installed, you can installGNOME Characterson your Linux machine by running the following command.

On Debian and Ubuntu, type:

A set of registration plates with various numbers, letters, and other symbols

And on RHEL/CentOS/Oracle Linux, etc:

Now You Can Type Accented Characters on Linux

It’s easy to useCtrl + Shift + Ukey combinations or a character map application to type accented characters on Linux. While modern Linux supports Unicode, ASCII text has a rich history in Unix-like systems. But there’s more to the relationship between ASCII and Unicode.

You’ve heard of ASCII and Unicode text, but what are they and how do they differ?

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