How to Type Characters With Cedilla Accent Marks

That fancy curlicue thingy under the letter C, identified and explained

Cedilla characters
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by Jacci Howard Bear
Updated March 19, 2018

The cedilla is a diacritical mark used to denote a different pronunciation of the letter it appears beneath—in most cases the letter C. Its appearance in English comes with words borrowed from French, Portuguese, Catalan, and Occitan. Characters with cedilla diacritical accent marks have a small tail beneath the letter C. Perhaps the most familiar word in English using the cedilla is façade.

How to Type Characters With the Cedilla Diacritical Mark

Cedilla accent marks are most often found on the upper and lower case letter C in English, as in Ç and ç.

Producing the character on a computer depends on your operating system. If you are working HTML such as for website content, there are special character codes used to produce the characters in browsers.

Note that some applications may have special keystrokes used for creating characters with diacriticals like the the cedilla accent marks. In those cases, check the software manual or help files if the keystrokes shown below don't work for creating cedilla accent marks.

Make C with an Accent Mark in Mac, Windows, and HTML

On a Mac, hold down the letter C key (or Shift + C for capital letter) until a popup menu appears offering a set of character choices and click the ç, or press the corresponding number key indicated. Alternately, press Option + C for the ç, or Option + Shift + C for the capital letter with the cedilla accent marks. 

On a Windows PC, hold down ALT while typing the appropriate number code on your numeric keypad to create the cedilla accent marks.

Don't use the numbers at the top of the keyboard. Use the numeric keypad and be sure Num Lock is turned ON:

  • 0199 (Ç)
  • 0231 (ç) 

In HTML, create cedilla accented characters by typing the & (the ampersand symbol), the letter (such as C or c), and then the letters cedil, followed by a semicolon. For example: 

  • Ç (Ç)
  • ç (ç)

​In HTML, the cedilla accent marks may appear smaller than surrounding text, so you might want to enlarge the font for just those characters under some circumstances.

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