I confess that, until very recently, I had been unaware of this Windows feature: the US-international keyboard.
Instead of using the character map like an illiterate savage or having to remember alt-codes like a linux-humping greybeard, it’s possible to add accents, cedillas, and even circumflexes in an idiot-proof fashion. It’s detailed in KB97738.
Goodbye feeling like an idiot for fumbling with the character map, hello not looking like an asshole for omitting accents grave in peoples’ names.