Q. I often use hard-to-find characters, such as register and trademark symbols, and en and em dashes. Mousing through submenu after submenu to find them in a software program’s special characters listing gets tedious. And a glyph palette, although handy, is still the long way around when a key combination would be fastest. It would be nice to have a list of all of the special characters.
A. Yes, some of these paths to find the somewhat hidden signs, symbols, and smart punctuation are tedious indeed. I also agree that using the keyboard to access them is the fastest way to go. Although I’ve memorized most of them, they’re all on a Stickie note on my desktop for easy reference.
Here is a list of the most commonly used special characters:
Are there other special characters you use frequently? Post your comments here!
This article was last modified on October 23, 2023
This article was first published on April 9, 2008
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