What Is an Umlaut?
The umlaut diacritic mark, also called a diaeresis or trema, is formed by two small dots over a letter, in most cases, a vowel. In the case of the lowercase i, those two dots replace the single dot. The umlaut diacritic marks appear on uppercase and lowercase vowels: The umlaut diacritic carries over into English when used in foreign branding, for example, in advertising or for other special effects. The popular ice cream company Häagen-Daz illustrates such usage.
Different Strokes for Different Platforms
Several keyboard shortcuts render an umlaut from the keyboard, depending on the platform.
Windows Keyboard Shortcuts
On Windows PCs, enable Num Lock. Press and hold the Alt key while typing the appropriate number code on the numeric keypad to create characters with umlaut marks. If you don’t have a numeric keypad on the right side of your keyboard, or the Num Lock key isn’t present on your keyboard, copy and paste accented characters from the Character Map in Windows.
Mac Shortcuts and Character Viewer
On a Mac, press and hold the Option key while typing the letter u. Then type the letter to which you want to add the umlaut. The Character Viewer program in macOS is another way to access these special characters. You can get there from most text boxes in most programs through the Edit > Emoji & Symbols menu. Another way to access these characters on a Mac is to use the PopChar X program, which is like a Mac version of the Windows Character Map utility.
Mobile Devices
On an iOS or Android device, access umlaut marks by tapping and holding a particular key. For example, tap and hold the uppercase or lowercase O key, then slide your finger over to ö or Ö to use it in texts, emails, and other documents.
HTML
Computer programmers use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a foundational computer language, to build, describe, and define the content of web pages. You’ll find it on almost every page on the web. To use HTML codes for German and other languages to render characters with an umlaut, type & (the ampersand symbol), followed by the letter (like A), the letters uml, and then a semicolon (;). This string must not include any spaces between the characters.
