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Type Romanian diacritics on an English keyboard: a guide

Every way to type ă, â, î, ș and ț on a US keyboard on Mac, Windows and Linux, and how to make sure you get ș with a comma, not ş with a cedilla.

Romanian needs five letters that a US keyboard does not have: ă, â, î, ș and ț, plus their capitals Ă, Â, Î, Ș, Ț. Many people skip them in chat, but in a CV, an email to a landlord or a document for work, text without diacritics looks rushed. Sometimes it also says something else: peste means "over", and pește means "fish".

There is one more trap that most guides leave out. There are two versions of ș and ț, and only one of them is correct.

Comma below, not cedilla

The correct Romanian letters have a small comma under them: ș and ț. The letters ş and ţ have a cedilla, a hook that joins the letter. They look almost the same, but they are different characters. The cedilla ş is the Turkish letter.

The cedilla forms got into Romanian text because early Unicode and the old 8-bit encodings had only them. The comma forms came in Unicode 3.0 in 1999, and many fonts, keyboard layouts and websites kept the old ones for years. The difference matters on a computer: search, find and replace, and spell checkers treat ş and ș as different letters, so aşa typed one way does not match așa typed the other way. Some fonts also draw the cedilla as a comma, so you cannot always see which one you have.

So when you choose a method below, check that it gives the comma form.

On a Mac

Press and hold. Hold a letter key to see the accented forms available in the current app and input source. Choose a letter by clicking it or pressing its number. The menu does not appear in every app and may not contain every letter you need. For a missing letter, use a language layout or Character Viewer.

Option shortcuts. On the standard ABC (US) layout, Option + I and then a or i types â or î. The layout has no shortcut for ă, ș and ț. The ABC - Extended input source offers more marks. Add it in Keyboard settings, then choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the Input menu. Hold Option to see its dead keys, press the key for the mark, then type the letter. Use Character Viewer if the letter is not available.

The Romanian layout. Open System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit, press +, choose Romanian and add an available Romanian input source. Switch between it and your US layout with Control + Space or the globe key if it is set to change input sources. Check Keyboard Viewer for the letter and punctuation positions in your chosen input source.

For an occasional letter, open Character Viewer with Control + Command + Space. Expand the viewer if needed, search for the letter, and double-click it to insert it.

On Windows

Romanian (Programmers). Open Settings → Time & language → Language & region, add Romanian or only its keyboard, and choose Romanian (Programmers). It keeps every US key in its place and adds the letters on AltGr, the right Alt key: AltGr + A is ă, Q is â, I is î, S is ș and T is ț. For most people with a US keyboard, this is the best built-in choice.

Romanian (Standard). This is the official layout. It types the comma forms, but it moves punctuation to make room for the letters.

Romanian (Legacy). Do not use this one. It is a QWERTZ layout from before Windows Vista, and it types the cedilla forms ş and ţ.

Alt codes. The leading-zero codes below use Windows-1252, the Western European code page. Results can differ with the system code page. Hold Alt and type a number on the number pad with Num Lock on: 0226 for â, 0238 for î. Windows-1252 has no codes of this kind for ă, ș and ț. In Microsoft Word you can type the Unicode number and press Alt + X: 0219 gives ș, 021B gives ț, 0103 gives ă.

On Linux

The Romanian layout in GNOME and KDE works like the Windows Programmers layout: the US keys stay, and AltGr + A, Q, I, S, T type ă, â, î, ș, ț. There is also Romanian (standard). Add either one in your keyboard settings.

With a Compose key, Compose, ;, s types ș and Compose, ;, t types ț. Be careful: Compose, ,, s types the cedilla ş. Compose, b, a types ă, and Compose, ^, a types â.

Where it gets slow

Romanian uses these letters in its most common words: și, să, în, că. With any method above, you stop several times in each sentence, and with a second layout you will type a ș where you wanted a semicolon.

Type without diacritics, get Romanian

Typeet works the other way round. You keep the US layout and type the way you would in a quick chat. When you finish a word with a space or punctuation, Typeet adds the diacritics:

The examples above use the correct comma-below letters ș and ț.

For each word it compares how common each spelling is in Romanian and in English, and where two spellings are both real words, the words around it decide. nu cred ca becomes nu cred că. Am cumparat o masina noua becomes Am cumpărat o mașină nouă, but Masina e in parcare becomes Mașina e în parcare, because "a car" and "the car" end differently. English words, names like iPhone, and code such as my_var stay as they are.

On Romanian test sentences it had not seen before, from the Tatoeba collection, Typeet adds 96.9% of the missing letters, 98.5% of all words come out right, and it leaves 100% of English words alone. It knows 139,888 Romanian words. We also typed Ion Creangă's Amintiri din copilărie without its diacritics, 25,207 words, and 93.2% came back right.

It does make mistakes. Press Backspace right after a fix to undo it. If you undo the same word ten times, Typeet stops changing it. To switch a word to its other spelling, press Option + Backspace on a Mac or Ctrl + Backspace on Windows and Linux.

Typeet runs in every app, from Slack to Word, on macOS 13 or later, Windows 10 or later, and Linux. It is off in terminals and password managers. Nothing you type leaves your computer. It is free for 14 days, then a one-time $19.

Questions

Should I use ș or ş in Romanian?

Use ș and ț, with the comma below. The cedilla forms ş and ţ are a leftover from old encodings, and search and spell checkers treat them as different letters.

How do I type ș on a Mac?

Check the press-and-hold menu for ș. If it is missing, use Character Viewer or add a Romanian input source in Keyboard settings.

Is there an Alt code for ș on Windows?

There is no standard Windows-1252 Alt + number pad code for ș, ț or ă. In Word, type 0219 and press Alt + X. For everyday typing, the Romanian (Programmers) layout is faster.

Does Typeet write ș with a comma or a cedilla?

The Romanian examples above use ș and ț, with a comma below.