Using Non-keyboard Characters in MS Word

Find Special Characters like é, ¼, and © in Microsoft Word

Sep 24, 2009

The twenty-six letters, 10 numbers, and assorted punctuation keys are adequate for most writing. Then a special character is needed for words like façade or piña colada.

More words than ever today require non-keyboard characters to be typed properly. In the past a typewriter would make a cedilla (ç) by typing the letter c. Then a backspace. Then a comma.

The latest version of Microsoft Word knows about such characters and will automatically change the normal character c in facade into a cedilla façade as soon as punctuation or space is struck. Word will not do this for every special character. But nearly any character can be accessed through the symbol insertion command.

Some Shortcuts for Special Characters

The easiest special characters to type are the most commonly used. These consist of characters like copyright, registered trademark, superscripted st after a number 1. Here are some, but not all, of these special characters. They occur by just typing the characters listed.

Character © Type (c)

Character ® Type (r)

Character ¼ Type 1/4

Other characters require special keyboard combinations. These are characters like the cedilla or enyay.

For characters that require combinations of CTRL, SHIFT, and ALT

Character ç Type CTRL + ,(COMMA), c or C

Character ñ Type CTRL + SHIFT + ~(TILDE), n

Character ë Type CTRL + SHIFT + :(COLON), e

For characters that require combinations of CTRL, SHIFT, and ALT plus a punctuation character like a comma or colon follow this procedure. The procedure for creating an ö is described in this example.

Press and hold CTRL + SHIFT + :(COLON)
Release all keys
Press the letter o
To make an uppercase Ö do not release the SHIFT before pressing O

For a more complete list of these foreign language characters:

Press F1 while in MS Word 2007
Type “special characters” (without quotes)
Click “Keyboard shortcuts for international characters”
The shortcuts for many foreign language characters will be displayed

ASCII Codes

All versions of Word (at least back through 2000) have had ASCII code recognition. ASCII is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is the decimal representation of 224 characters. The numbers run from 32-255. To access these characters follow the procedure below. This example uses the € (Euro symbol). (NOTE: The numeric keypad numbers must be used here; the alpha-numeric keyboard will not get the same results.)

Click on Insert/Symbols
In Word 2007 click on More Symbols (not necessary in 2003)
Click the choice box marked from and choose ASCII (decimal)
A listing of characters will appear
Click on the € symbol
If this character is to be used once, click on the Insert button and return to the document. If this character is to be used frequently, take note of the numeric Character code in the appropriately named box (128 for €)
To use the character again press and hold ALT.
While holding the ALT down type 0128 on the numeric keypad. (All numeric entries must be entered as four digits. Use leading zeros for two and three digit numbers.)
Release ALT.
After the ALT has been released, the character appears.

This method for using special characters is not exclusive to Word. It can also be used successfully with many other Windows applications.

Unicode Character Codes

It’s best to think of the Unicode characters as an extended set of ASCII characters. But instead of numbering a couple hundred characters, there can be thousands of characters, depending on the font. To access these characters the user must use the hexadecimal (base 16) value for the character. The instructions are slightly different.

Click on Insert/Symbols
In Word 2007 click on More Symbols (not necessary in 2003)
Click the choice box marked from and choose Unicode (hex)
The listing of characters will increase
The Greek character XI (Ξ) was chosen for this example
If this character is to be used once, click on the Insert button and return to the document. If this character is be used more often take note of the Unicode hexadecimal number
Type the Unicode hexadecimal number 039E
Press ALT + X
The 4 character code transforms into Ξ

This method of accessing special characters is available in Word 2007 and Word 2003. How and if Unicode characters are accessible in other software applications may vary.

The non-keyboard characters and symbols come from the areas of math, business, science, foreign language characters and others. By using the above techniques the user has access to characters never before available on a standard typewriter keyboard.

NOTE: Not all Internet applications recognize ASCII and Unicode characters. This may result in the display of several characters that appear to be gibberish. It is the user’s responsibility to check this before publishing online.

Using the Autocorrect Feature of Microsoft Word

The copyright of the article Using Non-keyboard Characters in MS Word in Computer Software is owned by Joe Nowak. Permission to republish Using Non-keyboard Characters in MS Word in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.