Sure, you can use the little Special Characters feature of the Edit menu. Or you can launch Google translate and use the pop-up keyboard.

But it’s a lot faster — and I think easier — if you just learn how to access these characters directly from the keyboard. Fortunately, the most commonly used characters — like à, é, ç and ô, etc. — are intuitive and easy to remember.

In short, holding down the option (alt) key will magically transform all of the other characters as indicated in the following table. For instance, if you want to type é, hold the option key and tap e, then tap e. To type á, hold the option key and tap e, then tap a.