Accents

For most languages that use the Latin alphabet, diacritics are important. The great exception is English, which also happens to be one of the most circulated languages in the world and the default setting on probably any contemporary keyboard.

In the age of online communication, most non-native English speakers who use the Latin alphabet have learned to casually ignore diacritics. Still, one could always decide that the best way to get a particular message across is by using all the characters provided by their language.

While most keyboards (paired with the right Windows settings) allow typing with diacritics, there are still plenty of tools that can help you with that endeavor. Take, for example, this extension for Google Chrome called Accents.

You know how on most smartphones you can use diacritics by holding a certain key and then selecting the character you want to type? Accents uses that exact principle for typing in your browser.

You hold down a key and small pop-up full of possible diacritics appears; you can either click on the character you want to use or just press its assigned numerical key. The second option is a very neat feature, because it allows you to incorporate Accents into your fast-typing activities.

While there’s no doubt that this is a very useful add-on, it still has a long way to go. On the webstore page the developers admit that Accents doesn’t work on Google Docs and Gmail yet. You could ignore this drawback, since the extension does work well on many other popular platforms (including Facebook, Twitter or Reddit).

But Accents’ biggest issue is that it doesn’t fully support all the languages that the devs say it does. You’re probably aware that Softpedia is a Romanian website, so, as a native Romanian, I can tell you that this extension doesn’t support certain special characters I need. But if your language was luckier and got a complete treatment, then you could start using Accents, even in this version.