How To Use Special Characters

There's a time in most every PC user's life when they'll want to use an unusual character or symbol in some text for one reason or another (possibly boredom:). Well, there's a lot of ways to do to such.

The easiest way is to simply click the Start button, click on Run..., type in charmap, then click OK — this brings up the handy dandy Character Map (view the Character Map's Help for more info). This is a good utility to use if you don't have too many special characters to type.

If you really want to impress your friends with new-found geek knowledge then press and hold the ALT button down and type three or four random numbers on the numeric keypad (on the right side of your keyboard - NOT the number keys above the letters), let off the Alt button, and a 'funny' character appears magically. All the keystoke combinations for all the unusual characters is not an easy thing to memorize — but if you're truly willing to try, the lists at the KeyBoard Help's page (link below) might help, and then surely you'll be able to impress all your friends — if you were able to remember everything in those lists, we'd be impressed at any rate. At the least, you might be able to remember the keystroke combination for special characters you commonly desire to use:

· KeyBoard Help's ALT Key Codes & Charts

Finally, and while I'm sure there's more available, you can head to the following Microsoft^® page (link below) to learn how to enable the International Keyboard:

· How To - Use the United States-International Keyboard Layout in Windows XP

OS: XP > General
Date: 12/15/05

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