How to Type Polish Accents
The 18 characters Polish uses, each one to copy, and the keyboard sequence that types it without copying.
Polish
18 2 with a Windows shortcut that worksHow to type Polish accents on a keyboard
Of the 18 characters on this page, 2 can be typed on a Mac's default ABC layout, and the other 16 need another layout or a copy. Adding ABC – Extended in System Settings, under Keyboard, takes that to 18 of 18. On Windows, 2 have a Word and Outlook shortcut and 2 have an Alt code that works anywhere, which is the route when the keyboard has a numeric keypad.
A dead key is pressed and released before the letter, so it looks like nothing happened until you type the vowel. One row here is one rule: learn the acute and every acute letter follows.
| Mark | Example | Mac | Word and Outlook |
|---|---|---|---|
| an acute accent | ó | Option + E, then o | Ctrl + ', then o |
| ogonek | ą | Option + M, then a on ABC – Extended | — |
| dot above | ż | Option + W, then z on ABC – Extended | — |
| l with stroke | ł | Option + L, then l on ABC – Extended | — |
Mac sequences are read off the layouts this machine runs, with UCKeyTranslate. The Word column is Microsoft's own table for Word and Outlook, not a Windows-wide shortcut.
Polish treats its accented forms as separate letters of the alphabet, each with its own place in a sorted list rather than a variant of the base letter. The ogonek, a hook under a and e, gives ą and ę, both nasal. The acute softens c, n, s and z into ć, ń, ś and ź, and also gives ó, which is pronounced like u. The dot above gives ż, and a stroke through l gives ł, whose sound is closer to English w than to l.
This group holds 18 characters. They run from U+00D3 to U+017C, close enough together to share a neighbourhood but not a single contiguous run. They are drawn from Latin Extended-A (16), Latin-1 Supplement (2) in the Unicode Standard, which is what decides how each one is encoded and how software sorts and compares it.
Of the seven languages here, Polish is the only one that needs the dot above and the ogonek. Everything else it takes, it shares with at least one neighbour.
Most of them, 16 of the 18, come from Latin Extended-A: further accented letters for Central and Eastern European languages. A block is an address rather than a category, and this group is drawn from 2 of them. The rest come from Latin-1 Supplement.
2 of the 18 have a Windows Alt code that works as printed. The rest are copy and paste, which works the same everywhere.
Of the 18, 1 has a Mac shortcut of its own. Everything else in this drawer is reached by copying it or by its codepoint, which works in every application on every system.
Every character below copies with one click. 2 of them have a guide page as well, with the Windows, Mac and HTML route written out.
Other languages
French (32)
32 characters, and the an acute accent as well.
Czech (30)
30 characters, and the an acute accent as well.
Portuguese (24)
24 characters, and the an acute accent as well.
Spanish (14)
14 characters, and the an acute accent as well.
Italian (12)
12 characters, and the an acute accent as well.