/KeyboardTyping-58cab6795f9b581d723af503.jpg "apple mac keyboard special characters")
You can also use the popular TextExpander application for Mac OS X ($34.95 from Smile Software) to create shortcut snippets that you can type to display a character. In this case, you'd type Option-261C to make the left pointing index finger magically appear in your document. To type the special characters, go back to the Input menu in the menu bar and select "Unicode Hex Input." Press and hold the Option key on your keyboard, and then type the hexadecimal code. Make a note of the Unicode code number for the character for the pointing finger, it's 261C. To determine what that code is for any character, just click on the character in the viewer, then "hover" your cursor above it until a yellow tooltip appears near it as in the screenshot above). Going through the process of inserting a symbol is fine if you're only going to be typing it once, but what if you need to re-use a specific character many times in a document? You can either do a copy and paste for each occurrence, or you can type the character using a unique hexadecimal code that is assigned to each character. All of those bizarre symbols in the image at the top of this Mac 101 post were just inserted into a Pages document in this manner. I can simply insert that character at my current insertion point in a document by clicking the insert button. In the screenshot above, I've chosen the "White Left Pointing Index" image. If I click on the Miscellaneous category as seen above, a large group of symbols appears. Scrolling through the list of different categories of characters on the left side of the viewer, you can choose from math, arrows, different types of parentheses, currency symbols, crosses, digits, Greek letters, ornamental punctuation, and even Braille patterns. Tap on the Input Sources tab, make sure that your default input source is selected (in the list of languages seen in the image below), and be sure to check the "Show Input menu in menu bar" box in at the lower part of the preference pane. The secret to playing with all of these bizarre characters is to get to know the Language & Text preference pane that can be found in System Preferences.
#Apple mac keyboard special characters how to
Follow along as I show you how to insert or type characters that won't be found on your keyboard. It's actually quite easy to do this, although finding these uncommon characters isn't something that's readily apparent, especially to new Mac users. One that I frequently hear is "How do I type on my Mac?" A good example of this is people who want to type fractions that look like this - ½ - rather than like 1/2, or plop a character like an umbrella - ☂ - or a skull and crossbones - ☠ - in the middle of a sentence. As a Mac consultant, I'm often asked some pretty bizarre questions.
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