Using special characters to spice up your text
In case you missed this post by Russel Ray, thought you might enjoy learning the finer points of special characters. After reading this post, I now know how to type my friend Reneè's name properly.
Using special characters to spice up your text
Update: There is another post that followed this one with more special characters and how to access special characters on your laptop computer: Accessing special characters on laptop computers
Yesterday I used per sé in a post.
My high school senior English teacher, Edith Head (but not THAT Edith Head) was quite the stickler for diacritical marks, which is the little doohickey above the e in per sé. That specific doohickey is called an acute, so if you wanted to tell someone how to spell résumé, you'd tell them that both e's have acutes. Of course resume is also a correct spelling, but that could mean that you are going to start again, instead of handing someone your work summary. And always remember what Mrs. Head taught us about how to spell résumé: "Two acutes or no acutes, but never just one acute." I.e, résume or resumé is incorrect.
Back in the 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 business.
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, so DON'T use them. I've used the standard three-digit code here, but if it doesn't work on your computer, add a zero in front of the three-digit code to make it a four-digit code. That should work.
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. I also have a 28-year-old policy against owning anything made by Apple Computers, 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 — ☺☺☺☺.
A future post will introduce you to an easy method to get the secret code for any special character you can dream up.
000 to 126 - These are your standard alphabet and numbers
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 are lines (│┤╡╢╖╕╣║╕╝╜ etc.).
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 - Ā
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 more 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 ☺!
Next post will be:
That tree needs to be removed!
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