Maybe for someone this is the secret of pulcinella but I am sure that many do not know that the Windows character map contains a large amount of symbols and also all non-Latin alphabets. So it happens that, when you are chatting on sites like Facebook, to write in an original way, symbols such as smiley faces ☺, hearts ♥, the sun ☼ come out and you can ask yourself how they are done.
These are not the classic Facebook emoticons or the emoticons to do with keyboard codes, those to express feelings or moods, which I have already talked about on other occasions.
These I'm talking about now are the special characters that you can do on a Word sheet, on a text document and also in the comments of forums and blogs and to write your status on Facebook, your name, to make a signature and in all programs and websites that provide a text editor where you can write.
READ ALSO: See and write Emoji on Windows PC and Mac
Even in more serious situations, when you need symbols like the brace {}, the tilde ~, the trademark symbol ®, the copyright © and many others, it is important to know how to do it with the computer keyboard.
On Windows all the types of fonts that can be displayed on an editor or text field are included in the Character Map which is found by going to the Start menu , Programs, Accessories, System Tools .
In this character map there are all the possible symbols, especially used in mathematics, and the letters of other alphabets including Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Chinese, Cyrillic Japanese and many others.
By clicking on the characters, not all but some, you can see how they can be redone using a combination of keys.
Those in which nothing is written, you can only select and copy from the character map and paste where they are needed.
As a general speech, however, the strange and funny symbols in chat or in any text editor, you can write with the keyboard on Windows by holding the left ALT key and then typing numbers on the numeric keypad .
For example, to make the heart, hold ALT, press, without holding it down, the number 3 and then release ALT.
Who uses the laptop must find the numeric keypad written in blue on the keyboard and activated with Fn keys for the same effect.
The cutest and most useful special characters are available on numbers 1 to 31; therefore, holding ALT you can try to write:
1 ☺ 2 ☻ 3 ♥ 4 ♦ 5 ♣ 6 ♠ 7 • 8 ◘ 9 ○ 10 ◙ 11 ♂ 12 ♀ 13 ♪ 14 ♫ 15 ☼ 16 ► 17 ◄ 18 ↕ 20 ¶ 21 § 22 ▬ 23 ↨ 24 ↑ 25 ↓ 26 → 27 ← 29 ↔ 30 ▲ 31 ▼
Then there are other important characters always to be done with ALT pressed and writing numbers:
123 {125} 126 ~ 128 Ç 169 ® 171 ½ 172 ¼ 184 © 225 ß 230 µ 184 ©
The easiest way to test these special combinations of the character map is to open Facebook and chat with the first that happens or by opening a new text document.
I recommend, to write a symbol you must press ALT, then the number, on the right numeric keypad, before releasing ALT again.
The character appears after the ALT key is released.
To help us write the special unicode characters and all the existing symbols, you can use an automatic program.
With the WinCompose program you can enter all the special Windows characters with a click, choosing them from a convenient table.
It then becomes easy to browse all the available characters and their sequences to write them wherever you want, by copying the symbol or special character and pasting it.
Uniqoda is a program to write unicode characters in a simple way, searching for them by name (in English) from a search bar and inserting them directly on our text.
On the CopyPastecaharacter website you can find all the symbols, organized by categories, and copy them to use them on any text editor or chat.
If you want to write special symbols on a website or blog using html code, the complete list of how to write them is on the ascii.cl website.
I also remember sites for writing international characters in foreign languages and various symbols.
