typing in french grammatical symbols

When I am typing a word like l'hotel, how do I type the circumflex over the o? Using the little 'french typewriter', whether I type the 'o' or the circumflex first, they are never in alignment. Looking forward to finding this out because it's a real puzzle that I haven't figured out yet. And I've certainly tried. Thanks for any help.

Bonjour Debrah, Go to the "Typewriter" and click the little box in the bottom left corner (below shift sign). You'll notice that some symbols become highlighted (gray). Find the symbol (^) you are going to use. If it is not on the keyboard you're looking at, click the "shift" button and look for more highlighted symbols. Find the appropriate one and click it. Then find the letter you want and click it next. All should be well. Also, here is a website that is useful when not in Rocket French like emails etc. www.lexilogos.com/clavier/francais.htm Hope this helps. Bon Courage, Mike

Merci Michael. I tried what you suggested but I think my computer is developing some wayward personality of it's own (maybe I should change it's name to Hal?) and everything goes well until I get to the point of clicking the grayed circumflex .......and nothing happens. Well maybe rebooting my computer will put Hal in a more cooperative frame of mind. But at least I know now what I'm supposed to do so thank you for your assistance. And thank you for the link also. Have a nice day.

You can also set your operating system keyboard input layout to include all the grammatical punctuation. My keyboard is set to English (United States - International). It takes a little getting used to but I like it much more. I feel like I'm actually functioning in French rather than pretending. In my OS it's: Control Panel->Regional and Language Options->Language->Details->Add. At this point select English- US International, apply->ok->apply. Your system may be different, but this should help. For example, when you want to insert accents use "apostrophe e" for é, "apostrophe c" for ç, "` a" for à, "shift 6 e" for ê, etc. Search for a full explanation of all the functions of the international keyboard if you decide to use it. You don't have to hold anything down between apostrophe and e to get é. The only catch is, to write "C'est" instead of "Cést" you have to press the space bar after the apostrophe, otherwise your keyboard will interpret the apostrophe e as é. The same goes for quotation marks which might accidentally come out ë if you don't add the extra space.

This (Rocket) system also accepts the [alt] + codes to make the French accents. It's much faster and it's fairly easy to get used to. For example, hold the [alt] key down and type 130 from the number key pad - é shows up. [alt] 147 = ô. About.com, Laura Lawless' site has a list of codes, even for the French quotes - [alt] 174 = « and [alt] 175 = » Here's the link: http://french.about.com/od/writing/ss/typeaccents_7.htm Hope it works well for you!

Merci Michael for the link to lexilogos. That helps tremendously. I too had the same problem as Debrah but was guided to use the virtual keyboard. The keyboard used to be on the Forum as well which helped practice writing French, but I don't know what happened. That keyboard prodded me to actually use French words, but without it, it is easier to type in my native language. Je suis triste!

I'm glad it helped Deborah! Typing French is hard enough without breaking your concentration to find an ô or û somewhere. The [alt] [letter] becomes second nature after a while.

Mike, thanks for the little keyboard (shift) trick! I was having fits trying to figure out the circomflex symbol, in testing, too. If I'm learning to type or spell something...It *has* to be correct. This fixed it!

Glad to hear it Stephanie! Now we can concentrate on what we want to write instead of searching for the right sequence of keystrokes just to type a letter with an àccênt!