14
votes

Not too long ago, I found a web page that gave instructions for adding accent marks to Cyrillic vowels. Unlike many other instructions I have seen, these were beautifully simple in that you typed the Cyrillic vowel first and then you used a key combination (of your own choosing) that would magically add the accent mark to the vowel. There was no need to set up some complicated macro or even use a key combination with a predesignated number code for a particular letter or symbol. It was incredibly simple and easy.

For some strange reason, I did not favorite that page and have not been able to find it since. I think it might have been a part of someone's personal blog, but either way, I would be grateful for anyone who might know what it is I am talking about and can either supply the instructions in an answer or provide the link to pages that do. I'm looking for a solution that works for Windows 7.

13 Answers 13

11
votes

This method only requires 5 keystrokes and no mousing around. You'll need a keyboard with a numeric keypad to use it. Make sure NumLock is ON.

  1. Type the vowel e.g. а.
  2. Press and hold the left Alt key.
  3. Type 769 on the numeric keypad.
  4. Release the Alt key. You should get: а́.

If you get a smiley face or any other character instead, try using a different program. It worked for me in Word and in Charmap, but not in Notepad or Chrome unfortunately.

If you need a grave accent, use 768: фо̀тоотчёт, гѝдроэлѐктроста́нция.

3
  • This produces a separate smiley symbol (а☺) for me in Notepad++ and on this site in Firefox; with 768 I get ‘а’, i.e. no visible effect.
    – PJTraill
    Jan 22, 2022 at 19:03
  • @PJTraill Try typing the stress marks in Word and then copy over to where you want them. May 18, 2022 at 23:28
  • I meant my comment as an addition to your list of which programmes support this method. Anything that needs switching between windows has too much overhead, in my opinion.
    – PJTraill
    May 19, 2022 at 11:37
11
votes

In addition to the previous answer, I'd like to suggest the method described in this blog. This method doesn't use a separate program (MS Word) but uses a pre-installed software available on any Windows PC:

  1. Open a program called Character Map (Navigate to: Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools).
  2. Group the character map by Unicode Subrange and Select Combining Diacritical Marks.
  3. Locate the Combining Acute Accent symbol and insert it after your letter.

Character Map

1
  • 1
    To take this wonderful response one step further, you can set an auto-correction whereby // is replaced by the combining acute accent. Then, if you want to type покá, you simply type пока// and it automatically inserts the accent. That's what I use and have been using for years.
    – CocoPop
    Jan 14, 2022 at 17:08
8
votes

Use this tool to have accent marks added to whole paragraphs of text automatically: http://russiangram.com

Disclaimer: I created it.

5
  • 1
    Thank you for your contribution. Your disclaimer made me smile ... your tool made me bookmark. If any of you haven't checked it out yet, and you need something like this, it's worth your while. It's got a nice clean, bright interface, and, even better, it works! мне нра́вится!
    – Lisa Beck
    Jun 26, 2017 at 7:10
  • 1
    Thank you @Lisa, I'm glad you liked the website and found it useful. Jun 26, 2017 at 12:33
  • 1
    @SergeySlepov Was about to suggest this! What an honor to "meet" the creator.
    – SAH
    Aug 24, 2017 at 1:58
  • 3
    @SAH, thanks for your comment. It made my day: I'm a celebrity! People recognise me on other websites. The creator, however, is Andrey Zaliznyak, the author of the Grammatical Dictionary of Russian. My contribution is very humble: 3% of all words and the website. Aug 24, 2017 at 19:26
  • 1
    This site is ingenious. I've been using it constantly for about three months, and it's really enhanced my study time. I realized I've been stressing a lot of words incorrectly for a long time and had no idea. Bravo!
    – CocoPop
    Jun 13 at 14:16
8
votes

I wonder if you know of this site.

It has lots of features including automatic accents: Automatic accents

1
  • No, I had not previously been aware of the site you mention in your answer. Thank you for sharing it. In fact, I just checked it out. Works like a charm. Again, спаси́бо.
    – Lisa Beck
    Jun 26, 2017 at 6:48
6
votes

The easiest way to be able to add accent marks is to install Ilya Birman's typography layout. Go there and press the big orange button "Скачать для Виндоуса" (Download for Windows). When you install it, adding accent marks becomes very easy: you type a vowel, and then while holding down the Right Alt and Shift keys, you press the ? / key twice and the accent mark appears above the vowel: а́, е́, и́, о́, у́, ы́, э́, ю́, я́.

If you enter a Latin vowel in your English layout and then switch to Ilya Birman's typography layout, press and hold the Right Alt and Shift keys and press the ? / key twice, and you'll get Latin letters with the acute accent as individual symbols: á, é, ó, ý.

Besides the accent/acute mark, that typography layout allows you to enter other diacritics: ä, à, â, ă, å, ã, ç, č.

6
  • It app-depends — if you write во́ля at browser, then copy to AkelPad, you will get вол́я. However, I think it is the best way.
    – yalov
    Apr 2, 2017 at 23:12
  • 1
    There are 2 possible results: hardcore combining 2 unicode symbols (diacritic+symbol): ю̈ к̊ т̃ щ̃ щ̈ щ́ ← sometimes diacritic is moved; or getting unicode char with diacritic through dead-key: ӧ о́ о̃ а́ а̃ (from predetermined list)
    – yalov
    Apr 2, 2017 at 23:13
  • Can anyone guarantee that all those DLLs in the zip file do nothing nasty?
    – PJTraill
    Jan 22, 2022 at 19:06
  • 1
    I've used this layout for about a year now and find it quite handy for stress marks, long dashes and proper quotes – «гип-гѝп-ура́!». Thanks @YellowSky for suggesting it. Jan 22, 2022 at 21:23
  • @PJTraill - I cannot guarantee it since I'm not the one who made the layout. What I know for sure is that it's been a famous, widely used, and universally acclaimed typography layout for more than 15 years already. Naturally, it's up to you whether to use products of Russia at all, who knows, maybe a week ago they implanted missile targeting trackers into those DLLs and nobody has noticed it yet.
    – Yellow Sky
    Jan 25, 2022 at 12:37
4
votes

Like something on the tip of your tongue that you just can't stop thinking about, I continued to search for an answer to this. Though I never found the page that had made everything so simple, I found a couple of pages that gave me enough hints to cobble together what I had in mind. I'd add at least one of the links here, but since it isn't directly related to Russian or the Cyrillic alphabet, I'll just provide an explanation here. If you are using Windows 7, you should be able to access "Symbols" from your Insert tab. I'll add some screenshots so you can know what I mean. Key sections have been highlighted in green.

First, you'll want to go to your Insert tab and click on the dropdown box for "Symbols":

From there, you'll want to click on "More Symbols..."

This will open up a window for you that looks like this:

Notice how the "Combining Diacritical Marks" in the dropdown "Subset" menu has been highlighted. You may find other accent marks that look like an acute accent mark, but this is the one you want. (It is number 0301, if you just want to type it into the field for character code to bring it up.) You should already find that it has been given a predesignated shortcut key, but if you prefer another, select the button for Shortcut key and create your own. ALT+Ctrl+э is what I chose for my shortcut. You can choose any you like as long as it isn't already assigned to another character.

Now you are ready to begin typing. Make sure you are using the keyboard you want. This will likely look different on different computers, but if you're using Windows 7 and MS Office 7, it might look something like the following at the bottom left and right of your screen (depending, of course, on how you have things configured):

If you feel certain you're about to use the correct keyboard, you can begin typing ...

Once you've typed the letter that you'd like to put an accent on, press your shortcut key combination ...

and an accent should appear over the last letter you typed. You can continue typing without making any additional keyboard strokes ...


You'll have to do this a bit differently in PowerPoint (at least the MS Office 2007 version). You won't be able to use a shortcut key, but you can access the same group of symbols, including the aforementioned #0301 character. What you will need to do is position your cursor immediately after the letter you want to accent and then insert it the long way -- pull up the Symbols box, find the character you need, and insert it. The character immediately preceding the cursor will become accented. If you want to preserve formatting inside of the textboxes you've created in PowerPoint, this is likely the best way to do it. I do not recommend copying and pasting a previously accented letter from Word, but go ahead and try it if you really want to. I think you'll see what I mean.


So, there you have it. Hope this helped someone out there.

2
votes

Google documents makes is relatively easy, although I don't like that Google docs doesn't seem to like ё. To add accent marks to your vowels, position the cursor after the vowel in question, select "Special Characters" from the "insert" drop down menu. Then select "latin" where you see "Symbol" and then scroll down to the accent marks need the bottom. Once you have selected your first accent mark a button will appear for categories; select "recent" and you will have the accent mark you just used (I use the combining acute accent mark). Then you can use the mouse to move the table out of the way then just move your cursor to the next vowel and click on the accent mark again. You can move pretty quickly through the document one word at a time.

2
votes

With grammatica.eu you simply cut and paste text and stress marks are automatically (and nearly instantaneously) placed. The program is not free, but definitely worth the price.

2
votes

(I came across this recently when trying to find my own solution to this problem. It took me a while, but I found a simple set-up - hope this helps someone in the future)

Here is a one-keystroke solution that works on Windows 7 and up.

Summary: create a custom keyboard and set the "\" (right side, under "backspace") key to the acute accent (U+0301). To type an acute accent, type the vowel and then the "\" key.

It works in OpenOffice, Anki, Mnemosyne, Notepad and Google Docs. It works in Notepad++ if you type the accent first and the character second. I can't test MS Word, unfortunately, though I think it should work. It won't work in LaTeX.

Steps:

  1. Download and run the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (this does work on new Windows 7, 8, and 10, even though they are not listed): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/906c31e4-d5ea-7988-cb39-7b688880d7cb (if the exact link is no longer good, just search that site for “Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator”).
  2. Go to File > Load Existing Keyboard... and select Russian.
  3. Click on the "\" key and then click "All..." to see the default mappings.
  4. Set the value to "U+0301" (no quotes). I left the slash (U+002f) at the shift state and moved the backslash (U+005c) to the ctrl+alt state. You can arrange the order however it is most convenient for you. enter image description here
  5. Test your mapping by going to Project > Test Keyboard Layout... and typing a character followed by the modified key.
  6. Go to Project > Build DLL and Setup Package. This will ask you to set the layout properties (name and description). You will likely get a warning about compatibility issues in non-Unicode applications.
  7. Navigate to the directory where the package was set up and run the setup.exe to install your new layout.
  8. Add your layout by going to your computer settings > Time and Language > Language. If Russian is not added, click Add a language, select Russian, and select your new keyboard layout. If Russian is already added, click Options, Add a keyboard, and select your new layout (you can remove the existing one).
  9. Restart your computer. Your new layout should be an option on your language bar (if you don't have the language bar on your taskbar, go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Turn system icons on or off and set Input indicator to On).
4
  • Do you know if something like this works on Linux? (See my related question: russian.stackexchange.com/questions/22334/… ).
    – PJTraill
    Apr 10, 2020 at 20:51
  • 1
    The link to the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator had rotted, but it suffices to search that site for Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator.
    – PJTraill
    Jan 14, 2022 at 15:40
  • The links on the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator page does not work for me (in MSW 8), but just lead back to the page itself :(
    – PJTraill
    Jan 22, 2022 at 19:50
  • I have the impression that Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator is no longer available. You could try to do the same thing with Keyman Developer from SIL (which also produces some nice fonts such as Gentium Plus): add combining accents to the normal MS Windows Russian keyboard (perhaps also grave for secondary stress) where you want them. I have tried that, and though it seemed fairly straightforward, I have not yet succeeded in reliably integrating the result into my system:( The result should work on multiple OSes:)
    – PJTraill
    Feb 18, 2022 at 17:17
0
votes

In Ubuntu, after typing the vowel, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 0301, press Enter.

0
votes

I have a different approach based on the problem that accented characters often flag up as spelling errors. Because of this, I use a double-underline under the stressed vowel - this has no effect on spelling. In Word, I use a simple macro to apply the underline, with a hotkey combination. RussianGram can also be used, though it only adds a single underline. Although it's a non-standard approach, it works fine for me personally.

-1
votes

Execute the following AutoHotkey-Script:

^]::send, {U+0301}

On my german keyboard ] is the * key, but for your keyboard you might need to find it out by pressing your key with russian layout. Now when I press CTRL+] the last typed letter gets an accent. This is for me the fastest way to add an accent.

Explanation of the script:

^ = CTRL
] = ]
send, = send the following as input
{U+nnnn} = any unicode letter which can be seen in the Windows charmap

This method is for me the most convenient, because I already use AutoHotkey for a few things (hotkey for closing any window, hotkey for opening browser, hotkey for opening terminal...).

-1
votes

As I understood the question was about automatically adding the stress accent mark on the stressed vowel in the word. The is a great answer from @ACKA But in case someone looks for a way to add them manually, use Win+. on Windows 10 or Command+Control+Spacebar on macOS.

1
  • I think it is fairly clear that the question is about manually adding the stress mark: ‘you used a key combination (of your own choosing) that would magically add the accent mark’. On MS Windows 8, Win+. makes the screen image momentarily shrink but does not add an accent.
    – PJTraill
    Jan 22, 2022 at 19:10

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