grace notes

[guy debrock]

Hi,
As a novice to lilypond, I have encountered two stubborn problems for which I 
have found no solution.
1. When I use grace notes (or appoggiaturas or acciaccaturas) the vertical 
alignment (in a piano staff system) is messy.
2. In spite of many assurances that emacs (which I use as editor) supports 
unicode (utf8), I have not been able to produce words that contain diacritical 
characters. I have tried to use the code used in latex, but that doesn't work 
either.
Any help expressed in clear language will be appreciated.

Thanks.
guy debrock