Let's imagine you're typing along peacefully on UtoNet one day and all of a sudden you have a strong desire to use the word 'kukjävel' in a sentence. A gasp escapes your lips as you realize that you left your European keyboard in the pocket of another pair of pants! Alas! How will you type that word that you love to say!? "I suppose I can look up the ASCII code" you ponder, "and use those alt keystrokes." Then it hits you, "I can use mIRC's accent shortcuts!" You manage to write a sentence like "Jag är en kukjävel" and all your Swedish friends giggle a little bit. mIRC saved the day!

But how, you ask, did mIRC save the day? The secret lies in your Ctrl key.

If you hold the control key, then hit the semicolon (;) key, then mIRC will enter umlaut (the little dots) mode. The next vowel you type, will have an umlaut over it. Amazing huh? Here are some more examples:

Ctrl + ; O = Ö
Ctrl + ` e = è
Ctrl + ' a = á
Ctrl + Shift + ^ U = û
Ctrl + Shift + ~ n = ñ
Ctrl + , c = ç

They're all logical combinations more or less that allow you to type most of the useful extended ASCII characters. One thing that I have found slightly annoying is that there appears to be no way to type a "ø" or "å" -- if you can find a way, let us know.

Another fun usage of this mode is to hit Ctrl + Shift + ". This will put you in smart quotes mode. 'bleh' will become ‘bleh’ and "blah" will become “blah” provided your font can support those quotes.

Now you never have to go another day without saying ‘kukjävel’ again!