Web - French

There are several areas to be careful about when doing web searching in any foreign language. Following are some ideas to help anyone searching the web using the French language or French resources.

Accents (acute, grave) & special characters

If you will be typing accents infrequently or you do not wish to change your keyboard:

Web Hold down alt and use the number pad, not the upper row of numbers. When you release alt the accented letter appears.

Acute
alt +	0233, 0201 =	é, É
Grave
alt +	0224, 0192 =	à, À
alt +	0232, 0200 =	è, È
alt +	0250, 0218 =	ú, Ú
cedille
alt +	0231, 0199	ç, Ç
circonflexe
alt +	0226, 0194	â, Â
alt +	0234, 0202	ê, Ê
alt +	0238, 0206	î, Î
alt +	0244, 0212	ô, Ô
alt +	0251, 0219	û, Û

WORD Hold down ctrl press the symbol key (don't forget to use the shift for some), release and press the letter:

ctrl + `(grave)             = à, è, ì, ò, ù - À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù
ctrl + ' (apostrophe) = á, é, í, ó, ú, ý - Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý
ctrl + ^ (caret)            = â, ê, î, ô, û Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û
ctrl + , (comma)        = ç, Ç

Disadvantage: you have to remember the numbers when using the internet.

If you will be using French a lot you can either:

Set your computer to US English International. This will not affect most of your regular keyboard uses but a few less commonly keys are affected. Once you have used it a few times, it should not cause any concern and is much simpler to use since the same keys work in all documents.
To Set your computer:

Open My Computer from the desktop
Open the Control Panel and choose Keyboard/Input Locales
Change Properties to United States International
Click on O.K./Apply/O.K

Once set, you use the quotation key before typing any accented letter. Nothing appears on the screen until the actual letter is typed. The quotation mark does not appear unless you hit the space bar.

Disadvantage: you have to hit the space bar after using the specific mark ("). The apostrophe is also an accent marker, so this could become annoying.

Set the keyboard to French language characters. Click here for instructions from Microsoft.

Search Engines

Read the general page on Web searching for a detailed comparison of search results from English Language based search engines and their foreign language versions.

French search engines do not recognize a word that should be accented and is not. It is assumed that the user will use the French alphabet, so not using the correctly accented spelling results in an ineffective search.

Prepared by Rosemary McGill. An administrative page of the Paulina June & George Pollak Library at California State University, Fullerton. (c) 2002 California State University, Fullerton. All rights reserved.
Created: April 4, 2002. Last Updated: March 10, 2006