Most of us English speakers rarely need to type accented characters, but if you have family or friends in Europe or Latin America and you wish to converse with them in their native language, you’re going to need a simple way to type accented characters on your English language keyboard.

And if you’re taking a foreign language class, being able to type accented characters is essential for completing assignments, typing essays, etc.

Typing an accented character typically involves looking up the ALT code for the character in question, then holding down the ALT key while typing the appropriate code on the numeric keypad. But a great free utility called Holdkey eliminates the need to perform either of these steps.

Using Holdkey couldn’t be simpler:  [Read more…]