Here is a short guide to producing accents in TeX, html and MS Word.
(You may also want to check out the Firefox extension: abcTajpu.)
To get (for example) János Kollár,
you should type
in TeX: J\'anos Koll\'ar
in html:
János Kollár
(in Google docs, hit "Edit" and choose "Edit HTML", then enter the above html
code. This is what you need to do in general when you want to enter html code into a
Google document).
in MS Word:
J[Ctrl+']anos Koll[Ctrl+']ar
i.e., push "Ctrl" and " ' " together and then "a"
And here is a short explanation why we (Hungarians and probably other nationalities whose alphabet includes accented characters) care:
Our alphabet starts like this: a, á, b, c, cs, d, dz, dzs, e, é,...
In other words, in the Hungarian alphabet "a" and "á" are two
different letters with different pronounciation (same for "e" and
é", etc.). We don't even call it an "accent", because it has nothing to
do with accent or stress. It is a different letter. Period.
As an example, consider the letters "i" and "t". Most people would
never consider not to dot their i's or cross their t's, even though if these
are forgotten, these letters do not become another one, whereas not putting an accent
on an "á" makes it an "a", a completely different letter!
Now you know why we care...