Typing special characters

Basic IT Skills • Typing special characters
Typing accented and other special characters
Each of the commoner western European accents is typed by pressing the Control key and keeping it down while you type a key on the keyboard. Then release the Control key and type the character on which the accent is to go.

To get the following diacritical marks on a letter
you should type these key-combinations ... followed by the appropriate letter
acute accent ´
Control+'(apostrophe)
grave accent `
Control+`(the grave accent, at the top left of the keyboard)
circumflex ^
Control+^(press Shift as well as Control to get the circumflex
umlaut ¨
Control+:(press Shift as well as Control to get the colon)
tilde ~
Control + ~(press Shift as well as Control to get the tilde)
For example to get é you should press the Control key and keep it pressed while typing ' and then release the Control key and type e. This sequence of key strokes is represented as: Ctrl+',e
The sequence of keys strokes for â is: Ctrl+^,a
which means, “Press the Control key and type ^ then release Control and type a.” Because the circumflex is a “shifted” character, you actually need to press the Control and Shift keys together.
Some more special characters are given in the table below

å, Å
Ctrl+Shift+@, A or a
ø, Ø
Ctrl+/, O or o
æ, Æ
Ctrl+Shift+&, A or a
ß
Ctrl+Shift+&, S
œ, Œ
Ctrl+Shift+&, O or o
¿
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+?
ç, Ç
Ctrl+, (comma), C or c
¡
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+!
ð, Ð
Ctrl+' (apostrophe), D or d
€
Alt+Ctrl+4
—the em dash
Alt+Ctrl+- (the minus on the number pad)
Autocorrect
If Word has been set up to use Autocorrect there are some special characters which can be entered by typing a simple key sequence. For instance (C) gives the copyright sign ©. Other common autocorrect sequences are shown in the following table:
(r) è ®
(tm) è ™
1/4 è ¼
1/2 è ½
:-) è J
3/4 è ¾
<-- è ß
<=> è ó
Choose AutoCorrect from the Tools menu to see more options. Note that you must have ticked the Replace text as you type option for these to take effect. Usually the transformation of the simple character sequence into the special character only happens when you press the spacebar.
Some practice with special characters
Try typing the following into your roughwrk document:
Trois bananes coûteront €1.
L’année dernière il faisait très chaud.
¡Niño bonito!
¾ + ½ = 1 ¼
Look further at the Symbol command
Choose Symbol from the Insert menu to see more symbols that can be inserted. Click on a symbol in the grid to select it, and then look down towards the bottom of the dialog-box and you will see the shortcut key for the selected symbol. Sometimes it will be a key combination or key sequence like those we have seen, but for many symbols you need to know the numeric code.
To enter a symbol with a numeric code, hold down the Alt key while typing the code on the numeric key-pad. For instance Alt+0177 gives ± and Alt+0186 gives º (the degree sign).
Non-breaking space and hyphen
On the Special Characters tab there are two other “characters” you should know about, the non-breaking space and non-breaking hyphen. To prevent a line break in between two words (for instance between “St” and “Andrews”) use a non-breaking space instead of an ordinary space.
To get a non-breaking space, hold down the Control and Shift keys while pressing the spacebar.
The non-breaking hyphen will prevent line-breaks occurring in something like the University web address: www.st-andrews.ac.uk. To get a non-breaking hyphen hold down the Control and Shift keys while typing the hyphen.
Smart quotes
To get “smart quotes” (where the opening and closing quotation marks are different) instead of “straight quotes” you should turn on the Smart quotes option. Choose AutoCorrect from the Tools menu and click on AutoFormat as you type. Then make sure there is a tick against "straight quotes" with “smart quotes”.