Entering accented characters and other non-English characters on a standard, US 101 keyboard has typically been a chore in Windows but there is an easier way. Using additional keyboard layouts such as the US, International layout can make this much easier and more intuitive.

The old system for entering keystrokes for keys that do not appear on the keyboard stems back to the days of DOS. One holds down the Alt key and enter a four digit octal unicode value using the numeric keypad (only the numeric keypad, regular numbers at the top don't work.) So typing Resume with correct accents would be entered as "R-Alt+0233-s-u-m-Alt+0233" yielding "Résumé". Not very intuitive as most people don't keep either an ASCII table or Unicode Table handy.

Another, easier way is to install an additional keyboard layout, United States, International. This keyboard layout allows a more intuitive system for entering non-English alphabet characters. Using this system, some keys on the keyboard become "dead" keys; when you first type the single quote ('), double quote ("), back quote/accent grave (`), tilde (~) or accent circumflex/caret (^) you get nothing until you type a second character. If that second character can be combined with the first accent mark you get the accented character. If the second character does not mate with the accent, both characters are printed and if you press space-bar, only the accent is printed.

"Résumé" now gets entered as "R'esum'e" -- much easier.

Full details on installing and using the United States, International keyboard can be found in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

You may have multiple keyboard layouts installed at once and can easily switch between them by way of the language toolbar (which will display once you have multiple keyboard layouts installed.)

*This applies to Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.