Dead keys

A dead key is a special kind of a modifier key (e.g. ^ ´ `) on the computer keyboard that is used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. For example to get â the user presses the key ^ followed by a.

This behavior can be problematic when working with software that requires the use of the pure modifier characters, e.g. a^n means a to the power of n in MATLAB and Mathematica. There are two methods to input the symbol of a dead key:

1. Press the dead key followed by spacebar. For example to get ^ press ^ followed by SPACEBAR.
2. Disable dead keys. To do this, open System->Preferences->Keyboard, go to Layout and click on Add.... Choose Country: Germany and Variants: Germany Eliminate Dead Keys. Use Move Up to move the newly added layout to the top. The dead keys on the keyboard should now produce their corresponding character by a single key press.

Further explanation is given in the corresponding Wikipedia article.