Keyboard shortcuts are ALT or CTRL codes that embed special characters into your content. Some well-known codes include CTRL+C (copy), CTRL+V (paste), CTRL+X (cut) or CTRL+Z (undo). Today I needed some special French characters, and started to Google…
I was just writing an email to a web design client, and got stuck. This particular client was looking for a French version of his English website and I tried to explain what I had in mind: on each page I would place a French flag and additional text “en Francais”. Like this: 
en Francais (OK – but then really hyperlinked ;o).
“En” what? Francais?
And yes – this is one of these moments that you wonder how to type those special characters into your content. In Word or one of the other text editing tools it is often easy enough: there are Special Characters options in the menu. But with some other types of software, including email clients, it is not always just as easy. There was no easy way to insert the รง (“c cedilla”) into my email.
Keyboard Shortcuts (ALT and CTRL Codes)
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Luckily I know that there are keyboard shotcuts for many, many things.
What keyboard shortcuts are? These are keyboard combinations of the (often) ALT or CTRL (control) key plus a numeric code, which you can use for special characters or functions. But there are for instance also keyboard shortcuts using the Windows key on the keyboard.
Some well-known shortcut codes include CTRL+C (copy), CTRL+V (paste), CTRL+X (cut) or CTRL+Z (undo). But there are also tons of ALT or CTRL (control) that allow you to do anything from bookmarking to printing a page. For instance, if you press the WINDOWS key 
and the letter D in at the same time, you will see the Desktop on your screen.
Where To Find ALT and CONTROL codes?
In my particular case, a search in Google for “keyboard shortcuts french c” immediately brought me the information that I was looking for.
As you might be interested in keyboard shortcuts too, I decided to turn it into a feature for this blog:
- Cool ALT key codes
- Handy combinations with the CONTOL key
- Special functions for the Windows key
- French ALT codes
- German special characters
Resources and Interesting reads:
