On a previous page we discussed fonts. Here we will consider an accessory called "Character Map"that has come with Windows since its early days but which is not as well-known as it should be. It provides a way to use the various font files to make available a large selection of foreign letters and special symbols of many kinds.

To open "Character Map", go to All Programs-Accesories-System Tools-Character Map. Not all systems may have "Character Map" installed and if it is missing use Windows Setup to install it. Also on some systems it is located directly in "Accessories" rather than "Accessories-System Tools".

Many fonts come with a set of special characters and these can be viewed and selected for copying and pasting into a document. The selection of characters is a function of which font is chosen and includes many types of symbols including foreign ones. The "Verdana" font selection is shown below with the "copyright" symbol selected.

To illustrate the variety, the characters displayed after scrolling down Verdana is shown next. A Cyrillic character has been chosen. To put the selected character into the Clipboard where it can then be pasted into a document, the "Copy" button should be pressed.

As another example, the Times New Roman font includes Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic characters among others. The figure below illustrates an Arabic letter. By using the "Select" button on a succession of characters, more than one can be pasted at one time. Whole words can therefore be inserted.

Certain symbols can also be entered directly through the numeric pad if you know the number code for the character you want. The number codes are available from Character Map. If the character can be accessed on the numeric pad, the number combination will appear in the lower right corner of the Character Map display. Note that in the first example given above where the Copyright symbol has been selected the notation "Keystroke: Alt+0169" appears. The codes are also listed at various places such as this reference. If you use some character repeatedly, this is the quicker way. Make sure the Num Lock is on , hold down the "Alt" key and on the numeric pad type the number code, e.g., 0162 (this happens to be the "cent" sign for certain fonts). Release the "Alt" key and the character appears in your document. This method is discussed in more detail on another page.

Microsoft Office and special characters

I do not want to venture very far into the jungle that is Microsoft Office but I will point out that several components of the various versions of Office have options for inserting symbols by using the menu entry Insert- Symbol. Whether you use these methods or the Character Map will depend on the circumstances.

Private characters

Widows XP comes with an accessory that provides for creating your own characters to be used with the Character Map and that is discussed next.