How to Type Portuguese Accents
The 24 characters Portuguese uses, each one to copy, and the keyboard sequence that types it without copying.
Portuguese
24 18 with a Windows shortcut that worksHow to type Portuguese accents on a keyboard
Of the 24 characters on this page, 24 can be typed on a Mac's default ABC layout. On Windows, 24 have a Word and Outlook shortcut and 18 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| a grave accent | à | Option + `, then a | Ctrl + `, then a |
| an acute accent | á | Option + E, then a | Ctrl + ', then a |
| a circumflex accent | â | Option + I, then a | Ctrl + Shift + ^, then a |
| a tilde | ã | Option + N, then a | Ctrl + Shift + ~, then a |
| a cedilla | ç | Option + C | Ctrl + ,, then C |
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.
Portuguese uses the acute for a stressed open vowel and the circumflex for a stressed close one, which is why the same word can carry either mark in European and Brazilian spelling. The tilde on a and o marks a nasal vowel, as in não and põe, and it is the mark most often missing when Portuguese text has been stripped. The grave marks a contraction, almost always à, and the cedilla keeps c soft before a, o and u.
This group holds 24 characters. They run from U+00C0 to U+00FA, close enough together to share a neighbourhood but not a single contiguous run. They are drawn from Latin-1 Supplement (24) in the Unicode Standard, which is what decides how each one is encoded and how software sorts and compares it.
Portuguese takes five of the marks on this site and shares four of them with French, the closest set to it here. The one it leans on that fewest of its neighbours do is the a cedilla.
All 24 come from Latin-1 Supplement: the accented letters and common signs Western European languages needed. A block is an address rather than a category, and this group is drawn from that block alone.
18 of the 24 have a Windows Alt code that works as printed. The rest are copy and paste, which works the same everywhere.
Of the 24, 12 have a Mac shortcut of their 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. 18 of them have a guide page as well, with the Windows, Mac and HTML route written out.