[Tex/LaTex] How to write i-circumflex

accents

In some French words when the circumflex is used over the i, there is no dot on the i. When I try to do it as described in "A Guide to Latex" the dot appears and the circumflex is too high. How do I fix this?

Best Answer

Just to demonstrate:

\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\mytest}{%
  \^{a} \^{e} \^{i} \^{o} \^{u} \^{w} \^{y}\par
  \textit{\^{a} \^{e} \^{i} \^{o} \^{u} \^{w} \^{y}}\par
  \textsc{\^{a} \^{e} \^{i} \^{o} \^{u} \^{w} \^{y}}\par
  \^{A} \^{E} \^{I} \^{O} \^{U} \^{W} \^{Y}\par
  $\hat{i} \hat{\imath}$}

\begin{document}

\fontencoding{OT1}\selectfont

\verb|OT1|:

\mytest

\fontencoding{T1}\selectfont

\verb|T1|:

\mytest

\end{document}

will produce:

Circumflex accents everywhere...

Note that using T1 not only improves the placement of the accent, it also supports copy-and-paste for the first five characters. To see this, try copy-and-pasting the generated text. You will find that only the first five characters in the lines using T1 paste correctly. The others will decompose into separate circumflexs and letters.

This does not work for the final two characters, ŵ and ŷ, because these are not included in the T1 encoding. However, even in these cases, the accent placement is improved.

To actually use T1 in your documents, you should use 

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

rather than the above code. I didn't do that because I wanted to demonstrate both OT1 and T1 in a single document.

As LaRiFaRi and Sean Allred point out, using 

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

or switching to XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX lets you input the accented characters directly. (I use the inputenc option but they all work.)

â ê î ô û ŵ ŷ
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