In the language of Molière, the capital letters keep their accent or cedille. Unfortunately our keyboards are not practical for writing accentuated capital letters, unless you know the right tools.
Unlike English, French has many particular characters, such as accentuated, linked or ceded letters, also called diacritical signs. However, if some have a touch dedicated on the keyboard (é, ù, ù), others are not entitled to it and in particular accentuated capital letters (é, ô, ô or ç). These special characters are then quite painful to enter, in particular under Windows, because the operating system still does not offer a simple method to do this in 2025.
To write writing these special letters with the Microsoft system, you must use a combination of convoluted keys, such as Alt + 0192 for the alt + 128 for the ç, which is frankly not intuitive and difficult to memorize for all possible characters. You can also install a utility like PowerToys, which contain a tool dedicated to special characters, but it is not very responsive and not very suitable when you need to write a lot and quickly.
However, there are many keyboard provisions specifically designed to facilitate the seizure of accentuated capital letters and other French diacritical signs (such as the French cedilles). One of the best known comes from the Linux world and is called FR-OS. This arrangement allows you to quickly access almost any increased capital letters, such as E, or O, the famous ç, or even particular mathematical symbols such as ≤ (less than or equal to) and ≥ (greater than or equal to).
Each character key (white on the image below) allows you to write up to four characters or symbols, accessible as follows: Simple support for the symbol at the bottom left of the key; Capper + support for the symbol at the top left; Alt GR + support for the one at the bottom right; Alt GR + Capper + support for the one at the top right. If manipulation requires a little practice, it is in any case much easier than retaining all the Alt combinations of Windows, and much faster to the entry than the dedicated tool of PowerToys.
Good news, several transpositions for Windows of this keyboard provision have been created and made available by generous users on the web. You will easily find it by typing “fr-oss windows” on a search engine, like that of Michel Julier or evenEric Bugnet. It is the latter that we will use for our example, because although it dates from 2013, we still use it daily on several of our computers, and it still works perfectly.
Start by downloading Installation files from this linkthen decompress the file FR-OS.ZIPopen it then double-click the file Setup.exe. If Windows displays a blue warning window, first click on Additional information then on Run upand also validate the window of User account control which should appear. After a few moments and once the process is finished, a window should tell you that the installation took place successfully.
If this is the case, a new keyboard arrangement has then been added to your computer, and you can activate it in several ways. In the taskbar on the right, you may see the letters “FRA” (or “Eng” if you use your keyboard in English mode), click on it to show a drop-down list that should contain an entry French (like FR-OS). Click on it to select this keyboard arrangement and test its operation.
If you like this arrangement, you can define it as the default that of your computer, so as not to have to select it manually. On Windows 11, go to Settings> time and language> Entry> Advanced keyboard settings and select French (like FR-OS) in the drop -down list. And on Windows 10, go to Settings> Hour and language> Language> Keyboard Then French (like FR-OS) in the drop -down list.
On the contrary, if you ultimately do not like this arrangement, you can very easily delete it from your computer. On Windows 11, go to Settings> Hour and Language, Click on the three points to the right of French (France) then on Linguistic optionsgo down to find French (like FR-OS) and click again on the three points on the right then finally on DELETE.
The path is almost identical on Windows 10: meet first in Settings> Hour and language> Languagethen click on French (like FR-OS) and then on the button Options. On the page that opens, go down to find the section Keyboardsclick on French (like FR-OS) and finally on the button DELETE. You will then be rid of the FR-OS arrangement, but you can of course reinstall it in the future if the heart tells you.