How to enter accent characters on the iPhone keyboard

(Sorry, iPhone haters! Three blog posts in a row about the iPhone… Go read The Sneeze or something.)

Maybe everyone already knows this, but I just found out about it by accident: Holding down a virtual letter key can produce alternate versions of that letter for different languages.

For example, if you want to enter a character such as é (for you francophiles) or ö (for you Mötörhëäd enthusiasts), just hold down the E or O buttons on the keyboard for a second or two.

  • E offers È É Ê Ë Ę
  • Y offers Ÿ
  • U offers Ú Ù Ü Û
  • I offers í ì ï î
  • O offers Ø Œ Õ Ó Ò Ö Ô
  • A offers À Á Â Ä Æ Ã Å Ą
  • S offers ß Ś Š
  • L offers Ł
  • Z offers Ź Ž Ż
  • C offers Ç Ć
  • N offers Ń Ñ
  • ? offers ¿
  • ! offers ¡

Now I’ve got a question for the world. When entering a URL, how can you enter in a # character? It’s used for web page anchors within a page. There doesn’t seem to be a way to enter that character at all (other than bookmarking on your computer and syncing that bookmark over).

Update: Kevin Fox answered this in the comments. Use the shift button after hitting @123.

3 Responses to “How to enter accent characters on the iPhone keyboard”

  1. Kevin Fox Says:

    Hit the @123 ’symbol-shift’ button, *then* hit the shift button. This is also how you get to the tilde ‘~’ and a few others. Real intuitive, I know…

  2. Stephen Says:

    Very nice. It is unlikely that would have found that on my own.

  3. Dan Says:

    I’m looking for this § anybody got an ideea where is it hiding?

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