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Spicing up your blog and comments with special characters

My owner is a marketing & business consultant in San Diego. This past week I visited several blogs that were talking about some of the cool symbols that you can insert into your blog posts or comments if you know their secret codes.

Back in the pre-Windows days of DOS, these were called ASCII characters (probably still are), and since I owned a word processing business, I needed to use these special characters to make my work look professional. I needed to know how to create an n with a tilde (ñ), or an e with an acute (é), or one-quarter (¼), half (½), and three-quarter (¾) symbols for equations.

When I started my word processing business, I applied for work with Leon Jaworski's Houston law firm. Jaworski was the 1974 Watergate Special Prosecutor. I got the job because my sample legal work used legal symbols (§, ¶, ™, ©, ®) rather than writing them in as my competition did. Sometimes the little things can win you the big things.

Apple Corps, Inc., home of The Beatles Herewith, then, are the ASCII codes for lots of symbols. Just hold your ALT key down and type the code on your numeric keypad at the right side of your keyboard. Using the number keys at the top of your keyboard DOES NOT work. I've used the standard three-digit code here, but if it doesn't work on your computer, try adding a zero in front of the three-digit code to make it a four-digit code. That often works.

On Apple computers, I believe you use the Option key instead of the ALT key, but I haven't used an Apple computer in 16 years and haven't owned one in 30 years, so I'll let the Apple crowd weigh in if they would care to. As far as I'm concerned, only The Beatles have the right to use Apple for their company logo -- LOL.

A future post today or tomorrow will introduce you to an easy method to get the secret code for just about any special character you can dream up.

127 - ⌂
128 - Ç
129 - ü
130 - é
131 - â
132 - ä
133 - à
134 - å
135 - ç
136 - ê
137 - ë
138 - è
139 - ï
140 - î
141 - ì
142 - Ä
143 - Å
144 - É
145 - æ
146 - Æ
147 - ô
148 - ö
149 - ò
150 - û
151 - ù
152 - ÿ
153 - Ö
154 - Ü
155 - ¢
156 - £
157 - ¥
158 - ₧
159 - ƒ
160 - á
161 - í
162 - ó
163 - ú
164 - ñ
165 - Ñ
166 - ª
167 - º
168 - ¿
171 - ½
172 - ¼
173 - ¡
174 - «
175 - »
176 - ░
177 - ▒
178 - ▓
179 through 218 were used for making different types of boxes.
219 - █
220 - ▄
221 - ▌
222 - ▐
223 - ▀
224 - α
225 - ß
226 - Γ
227 - π
228 - Σ
229 - σ
230 - µ
231 - τ
232 - Φ
233 - Θ
234 - Ω
235 - δ
236 - ∞
237 - φ
238 - ε
239 - ∩
240 - ≡
241 - ±
242 - ≥
243 - ≤
244 - ⌠
245 - ⌡
246 - ÷
247 - ≈
248 - °
249 and 250 - ∙
251 - √
252 - ⁿ
253 - ²
254 - ■
255 - blank space
256 - not used
257 - ☺
258 - ☻
259 - ♥
260 - ♦
261 - ♣
262 - ♠
263 - •
264 - ◘
265 - ○
266 - ◙
267 - ♂
268 - ♀
269 - ♪
270 - ♫
271 - ☼
272 - ►
273 - ◄
274 and 279 - ↕
275 - ‼
276 - ¶
277 - §
278 - ▬
280 - ↑
281 - ↓
282 - →
283 - ←
284 - ∟
285 - ↔
286 - ▲
287 - ▼

You can keep on going but most of the remaining numbers give you duplicates of what I've given you above. However, you might find a couple of interesting symbols here and there, and adding a leading zero to make it a four-digit code could give you some interesting symbols on your computer or in your software. The codes I've given you above are pretty much universal regardless of what software you are using or what type of computer you have.

So have a ♥ and ☺!

We are ActiveRain!

**********

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Posted by Russel Ray, San Diego Marketing & Business Consultant on 10/25/2009 05:43 AM

Comments (26)

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26 Comments on Spicing up your blog and comments with special characters

OCT

Is that it? It is that easy? you know how many hours I have spent trying to find some of those?

Thank you TONS!!!

Paul G

Awesome, Russel...I'm bookmarking this post for future reference! :)

Leilani

Hey, Paul - Yep, that's it. It really is that easy. Now in the olden days of DOS where what you saw on the screen wasn't necessarily what you got when you printed the document, it could get to be really frustrating because there might be a blank spot on the screen when you typed an ALT code. One had to have confidence in one's typing ability to know how the blank spot would print. Doing chemical equations and boxes were at lot of fun in the DOS days, and I say that with every bit of sarcasm I can muster. I thank whomever actually invented Windows and WYSIWYG every day as I'm typing some of the stuff that I do.

Hey, Leilani - Hope it helps. Stay tuned for my future post on finding ALT codes for literally hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of special characters.

Wow.....it sounds sooo easy and soooo techy...I have just pasted it into a file where I can find it when I want to get sophisticated...or look educated...much grass Pal !

Russel, my tired old eyes were looking for the code for registered trademark! Thank you, great information to be sure. And very useful!

Hi Russel: You rock! I am going to bookmark this post! Thank you!

☺

It never ceases to amaze me, Russel the information that you can retrieve from your brain. Amazed me again, but I'm with Andrea, where's the registered trademark code? Oh, and I have a laptop, which has no side set of numbers like the old computer keyboard. Hmmmmm.

Hey Russel, thanks for the great post. I'm bookmarking this one and sharing it with my daughter who will get great benefit from your work. Thanks guy.

Oh I can't do those things....I can't even make the basics work for me. So my blogs are basic writing and a few pictures. Thanks for trying...many more technical people than me will appreciate it.

I think this is great. I have to get on my regular desktop and off my laptop as my laptop doesn't have the numeric keypad. Thanks so much!

Russel,

This can look quite professional.

I'm going to print this.

Brian

Russel,

I have often wondered how folks get those little hearts and such in their posts! Great little list. Thanks for taking the time (as I am sure this took some time) to share it with us! ♥

This is so COOL! I'm going to print off this list - I had no idea about this! Thanks, Russel!

Debi

Thanks Russel! You have ☼ my day with this great information!

Someone reblogged your blog with their logo at the top....and I didn't notice that until I went back. Thank YOU!!! I thought this was great information. You are so SMART!!!

♥ Thank you Russel! You make our lives so ♫!! ♥

Russel, not only are you the AR historian, now we are learning your techkie stuff...thanks bookmarked for later use.

Russell,

This was definitely worth book marking. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

I remember playing with some of those when I worked more on my PC. Still own a PC but mainly I work on my mac. I tried the different options and they don't appear to work. :-( I had forgotten all about these characters until you reminded me. Thanks! Now I'll play with them from the PC

OCT

Russel,

Great post! I knew a few shortcuts for accent marks but I had no idea how to create all those symbols. Thanks for the list. I'll be sure to print it out for future reference.

Wow, you are so filled with useful information!! Now how can we make the numbers work on the laptop without numeric key pad !!??? We have faith you will find a way!

OCT

Thanks Russel. That is very kind of you to post this. "It is bookmark worthy." ☻

Hey Russel, as always a very interesting post. I've always wanted to be able to do ½ & ¼ without having to do 1/2 and 1/4. I knew there had to be a way. Yeah Russel!

OCT

That is a most informative post. Coming from the UK originally, it's great to know an easy way to use the £ symbol.

Thank you so much.

Steve

OCT

DOS that's a blas from the past....are you showing your age? Love the codes. Thanks!

NOV

Russel, you have such a dynamic past! Thanks for sharing... I had no idea you could do this so easily.

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