How do I insert a breve and macron in my Word documents on Macbook Pro, version 10.6.8?
MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
It is usually accomplished by holding the option key with a letter. For example ê is typed with option i then e.
Some letters are harder to find. Try opening Language & Text in System Preferences. You can choose a number of different country-specific keyboards.
There are several methods.
(1) The most practical (ie, to type large chunks of text) is to enable a suitable keyboard layout.
Go to System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources
Check "Show Input menu in menu bar".
In the "Select input methods", check "Keyboard & Character Viewer".
If you plan to type in a specific language, select the respective layout.
If there is no such layout, select the US Extended and the Unicode Hex Input layouts.
On the right, there is a button which will take you to Keyboard shortcuts to set the shortcuts for selecting input methods. It's practical to set these shortcuts, if they're not already set.
Of course, the layout for your own language should be already selected.
Once you're done, an Input menu will appear to the right on your menu bar. In it will appear the key layouts you selected, as well as two new commands, Show Character Viewer and Show Keyboard Viewer.
With Keyboard Viewer you will be able to determine how to input the respective character with the selected layout.
To type, for instance, ā (a-macron), you switch to US Extended, and type ⌥a+a (ie, press and hold option, press a, then release the option key and type a again.
Alternatively, if you know that the Unicode hex codepoint for a-macron is 0x0101, you switch to Unicode Hex Input, and type ⌥0101.
You can cycle between key layouts using the shortcuts set as above, or by choosing from Input menu.
(2) Less practical is to enable Character Viewer as above, choose View: All Characters, then choose European Scripts > Latin, and then insert the character by double-clicking on its glyph.
(3) Another option is to use Word's Insert > Field… command.
ssantora wrote:
How do I insert a breve and macron
There is a chart of how to add various diacritics like these using the US Extended layout here:
How do I insert a breve and macron onto vowels?
