I often have to input diacritics and other characters (more off-Wiki than on), so I have my computer set up to handle these things.

I'm a Linux guy, and prefer Debian. I'm sure there are methods similar to the following for Windows or Mac, but I don't know them. As I live in Japan, I use a Japanese keyboard; most of the keys are the same as on an American keyboard, but some puctuation marks are in different places, and there's a button for switching between Roman and Japanese input. For Japanese input I use kkc with Fcitx.

To input diacritics, I have made my Insert key into a Compose key—the Compose key is common on European keyboards. To do this, I have added the line keysym Insert = Multi_key to my ~/.xmodmap file and run $ xmodmap ~/.xmodmap at startup. Of course, this could be done with any other key on the keyboard I don't use. The Compose key makes input of diacritics a snap—for example:

• Compose + ' + e = é (great for French)
• Compose + " + o = ö (great for German)
• Compose + - + a = ā (great for Japanese)
• Compose + a + e = æ (great for words like encyclopædia, though you won't get away with this on Wikipædia)
• Compose + - + - + - = — (an emdash—I love these)
• Compose + - + - + . = – (an endash—used on Wikipædia for date ranges: 1899–1943)

I'm always discovering new uses for the Compose key. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support IPA, which I use all the time off-Wiki (and sometimes on-Wiki), I don't know an easy method to input IPA characters, so I guess I'm stuck with copy & paste.

• Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing
• starchy prescriptivism—the culling of unproblematic, all-too-English "split" infinitives, stranded prepositions, and the inanimate whose. Any prescription that does not improve the communicative power of the language needs to go.

• Featured Pictures uploaded by Curly Turkey
• 
  Nurioke no bosetsu, Suzuki Harunobu, mid-18th century
• 
  Little Nemo in Slumberland,
  Winsor McCay, 29 September 1907

* = created after following a REDLINK

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