If you have ever wondered where to get the special characters like the umlaut or the tilde, here is a handy little chart.

This information was provided by Claris Corporation on 16 March 1998, and incorporated into Apple Computer's Tech Info Library.

Many people use Claris products to work in foreign languages, even though they purchased their Macintosh with a U.S. keyboard and the English language version of their System software. In order to write in other than English, you need a number of special characters. Special characters are also used in editing and desktop publishing. These characters are not a function of any individual application on a Macintosh. They are, however, a part of many Macintosh fonts. Be aware that these characters are not likely to be in all fonts. They are part of most of the standard Macintosh fonts, however. To find other characters not listed here, use the Key Caps application, found under the Apple menu. By pressing various combinations of keys, Key Caps will show you all the characters contained in a particular font.

Figure 1: Commonly Used Foreign Language Characters and Symbols

Figure 2: Other Special Characters