I’ve been itching for this for a long time but never got up the steam to actually go find out how to do it until today. You can type special characters (accented characters, special punctuation, etc.) directly from the keyboard by following this handy guide. (Shift+AltGr means press the Left Shift and Right Alt key at the same time.) For example, pressing and releasing Shift+Alt, then c, then | gives the cents symbol: ¢. Armed with this knowledge, expect me to get all punctuaty and typographical in future posts.

You can also press and release Ctrl+Shift+U, then a unicode hex value, then space. That’s equivalent to the Windows Alt+<unicode> shortcut. Get the hex values from the Character Map in the Accessories menu.

Comments

1. RubiaLala on 2008-04-12 08:07:50 wrote: This is seriously so good to know. I have to type in Spanish and English at work and I usually go online to find my accented letters and then paste them into my document! I made a Word doc with all of this copy and paste work to make it easier on myself but I’m sure your info will be the most helpful. Thank you!