How can you write without special characters?

Explanation

There are six letters which are unique to Esperanto: Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Ŝ and Ŭ. These letters have circumflexes. Unfortunately, however, it is very often not possible to use the correct characters. For example it could happen that we want to type in Esperanto, but are using a computer program that is not capable of correctly showing all of the Esperanto letters. In these cases, there is a need for an alternative method of writing. One of these alternate writing notations is mentioned in the Fundamento de Esperanto; in this script, instead of putting circumflexes over the letters Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ and Ŝ, we use the letter H after the letter that usually gets a circumflex, and we leave out the circumflex entirely for Ŭ:

ĉ -> ch
ĝ -> gh
ĥ -> hh
ĵ -> jh
ŝ -> sh
ŭ -> u

However, in practice it's possible to run into other ways of writing without circumflexes. Here are some of them:

ĉ -> c' -> c^
ĝ -> g' -> g^
ĥ -> h' -> h^
ĵ -> j' -> j^
ŝ -> s' -> s^
ŭ -> u' -> u^

Recently, for computer work, by e-mail and so forth, some people use the letter X after the circumflexed letter, for all circumflexes.

ĉ -> cx
ĝ -> gx
ĥ -> hx
ĵ -> jx
ŝ -> sx
ŭ -> ux

Also, on these pages, if you aren't able to type the correct letters, we recommend that you use this writing notation, because lernu! will automatically convert your letters to the correct ones.

But don't forget that these are only alternative ways of writing, and they are only needed when you don't have the ability to use the correct characters.
Visit the Special Characters page to learn more about this topic.