Um... Um... Umlaut? - [website] Published: 21st of Jul 2011 by: Ms Knowitall
Using umlaut (Ë, Ö etc.) can be a tricky thing on a computer if you aren’t a technogeek (like me)...
... but there are actually various different ways to get those two pesky dots atop the vowel you need.
Firstly, your computer should have the symbol you’re looking for in its character map, which you can locate by clicking Start, All Programmes, Accessories, System Tools, Character Map. Then you can select it (by clicking it), copy it (Ctrl+C) and paste it (Ctrl+V) onto the document you’re working with.
This can be very tedious though as sifting through all the characters can take a while, and even then you may find you’ve accidentally skipped over it.
You may also find that the text editor you’re working in has an Insert Symbols (or something similar) option, but like in the example above if you don’t want to look through a mountain of symbols this isn’t really for you.
The easiest way to insert umlauts (but perhaps not the easiest to remember) is by using the Alt key and the character’s code. The way you would do this is by making sure the Num Lock is activated on your keyboard, then holding Alt and entering the code on the number pad. When Alt is depressed the chosen character will appear on the document.
The codes for vowels with an umlaut are as follows:
Upper case – A=0196, E=0203, I=0207, O=0214, U=0220 and Y=0159
Lower case – a=0228, e=0235, i=0239, o=0246, u=0252 and y=0255
