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If Bill Shakespeare were alive today he'd gladly replace his quill with the latest laptop, and after he'd been using it for a while he'd probably say, "There are more characters in this laptop, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
It's true. Your PC is a cornucopia of wonderful characters you will find useful if you do much writing, or if you regularly correspond overseas. OK, so if you know where to find the £ and the ¥ and even that most modern of all currencies, the €, then you need read no further. If you don't know how to find special characters, this could be useful.
You can find most characters easily in the program you're working with. For instance in MS Word and Word Perfect (I'm depending on memory here—I haven't used either for years) you need only click on "Insert" and, from the drop down menu, select "Special Character". Select the character you want, double click (or single click, then click OK) and, voilà! you have what you need.
You've probably already discovered that typing a double dash in Word gives you an automatic long dash. For instance, if you type long--dash you will get an em dash separating the words (long—dash) but if you put spaces around the two hyphens like long -- dash you'll find them separated by an en dash (long – dash). Easy.
But this hint isn't about things you can do easily from your keyboard. It's about finding those elusive characters that only materialise, genie-like from the innards of your PC, when you pull the stopper out of the bottle.
To find those, click the Start button. Now, click Run and in the dialogue box that appears, type "charmap". Now either click OK or just press Enter.
The character map that appears will allow you to choose any of the myriad characters that have been programmed into your computer. Select the font you need, click the character you want, click select, then click "Copy".
Bill the Bard would have loved it.
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