Greek on the Mac

Typing in ancient, or ‘polytonic’, Greek in Mac OS X is really quite simple. Because Mac OS X makes use of Unicode—a standard method of encoding characters in many different languages—polytonic Greek is now cross-platform compatible, meaning that documents produced either with Greek in them or even entirely in Greek are readable on all computers: Mac, Linux, Windows, etc. Furthermore, Mac OS X makes it easy to enter the Greek characters with special diacritical marks, especially in Leopard, Apple’s latest release of Mac OS X.

Enable the Greek keyboard layout

First you have to enable the polytonic Greek input method in your System Preferences. Note that on the Mac there is no functional difference from the user’s point of view between an ‘input method’ and a ‘keyboard layout’; I use the terms interchangeably. Also note that this is different from enabling a Greek font or anything like that: this is simply so we can enter Greek characters. Unicode separates the act of inputting the text from the issue of displaying the inputted characters on screen: the latter task is accomplished by fonts. We’ll address the issue of Greek fonts later on.

To enable Greek input, open your System Preferences from the Apple Menu or the Dock, and click on the ‘International’ panel:

Click on the ‘Input Menu’ tab, scroll down to ‘Greek Polytonic’, and tick the check-box next to it to enable the Greek layout. You don’t have to enable ‘Greek’ as well; this refers to Modern Greek. Neither do you have to enable ‘Hebrew’; it happens to be enabled as well on my system:

Quit the System Preferences application. Polytonic Greek is enabled!

Entering text in Greek

To enter text in Greek you will need an application that ‘plays nice’ with Unicode. Most applications on the Mac now do this; the exceptions are those that are written in Carbon, a programming framework for older Mac applications. The most important such programs are those of Microsoft Office v.X. If you’re running Office 2004 or later, you will be able to use Unicode with these applications. If not, there are a zillion other good reasons to upgrade.

Apple’s TextEdit is somewhere between a notepad-type utility and a true word processor. I like it well enough for relatively straightforward jobs, but when I want all the features we’ve come to expect from word processors and none of the cost, I generally break out NeoOffice, a free and open-source productivity suite. Sure, it has its bugs, but it does Unicode, and the price is right. I also quite like Mellel, a word processing program specially designed for Unicode in general and right-to-left text in particular. Its footnoting and citation system is also terrific.

Having procured your weapon of choice, we’re ready to enter some Greek text. Notice that since you enabled the Greek Polytonic input method, a flag has appeared on the right side of your menu bar: this flag is actually a menu for switching between input methods:

Pull down this menu and select ‘Greek Polytonic’:

You’re now ready to enter text in Greek. The keyboard layout is pretty straightforward: ‘a’ is ‘alpha’, ‘b’ is ‘beta’, and so forth. Diacritical marks are on ‘dead keys’—the keys are ‘dead’ because they don’t actually produce a character by itself, but are meant to be typed before other keys to get accent marks. Dead keys produce characters in orange highlight before actually assigning diacritics to letters (in older versions of the Mac OS, they didn’t produce any on-screen output; whence the moniker ‘dead’).

To enter a diacritical mark, first type the key for the diacritical mark, then type the letter you want it to appear over. If you want two or three diacritical marks, make sure to type them all before typing the letter itself. Thus, if you want an omega with circumflex, rough breathing, and iota subscript, you would type Option-i, Shift-”, [, and then finally 'v'. Some common combinations have their own one-key shortcuts: the slash key '/', for example, produces a smooth breathing and acute.

Here is a chart of the Polytonic Greek keyboard layout for your convenience:

If you, like me, are constantly forgetting where all these are, not to worry: Apple has provided you with a great little tool in the form of the Keyboard Viewer. This window can be kept open while you type, giving a real-time view of what each key on the keyboard represents at any given moment. It can be enabled in the same place in the International pane of the System Preferences where you enabled Greek Polytonic earlier. Just find ‘Keyboard Viewer’—it should be near the top—tick the box, and you’ll have a new option in the International menu (remember the flag in the menu bar?). Here is a picture of the keyboard viewer showing my laptop’s Greek keyboard:

Greek fonts

Mac OS X comes with a few fonts built-in that are able to support displaying polytonic Greek characters; you may already have encountered Lucida Grande, a font whose name is, well, grander than it has any right to be. The installed versions of Times (not Times New Roman) also supports polytonic Greek, and looks a lot nicer than Lucida Grande. However, my favourite font is Gentium, which, despite being published by SIL, is free and beautiful. Gentium comes in two versions: Gentium, with a squiggly circumflex, and GentiumAlt, with a curvy circumflex. Gentium supports both Greek and Roman characters quite well. Another good font option is New Athena Unicode, which doesn’t do as good a job with Roman characters but the Greek is quite readable. It is used as the Greek font of choice by several classics journals and publishers, most notably Cambridge University Press.

Here are the first seven lines of the Iliad as displayed by seven common and easily available Greek fonts. You make up your own mind as to which you like better:

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This document has been evolving continuously since I initially wrote it for my Introductory Greek course at Reed College. Questions? Comments? Etc.? Ktl.? Please contact me.

This document is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Licence.

French: Ce document est licencié sous une licence Creative Commons Paternité-Partage des Conditions Initiales à l’Identique 3.0.

If you wish to arrange alternate licensing terms, please contact me and I will be happy to consider it. Screenshots of copyrighted computer programs are used in this document under the assumption of ‘fair use’.

Last updated: 3 February 2008