Typing Special Characters on a MAC
There are two ways you can key in special characters on your mac.
1. Use the Character Palette
2. Use the Keyboard Viewer
- Use the Character Palette
- Use the Keyboard Viewer
Click on the ‘Edit’ menu within the application you are using and then click ‘Special Characters’.
If ‘Special Characters’ is not available under the ‘Edit’ menu, then click on the desktop (this changes the top menu bar to the Finder menu bar) and then click ‘Edit’ menu. The ‘Special Characters’ option should be there. Otherwise, you may have to activate it by going into ‘System Preferences’ then selecting ‘International’ then ‘Input Menu’ and turning on the ‘Character Palette’.
This loads up the Character Palette:
Double Clicking on the character you want will insert it into the application you are using.
To enable this feature, Go to ‘System Preferences’, select ‘International’, ‘Input Menu’ and turn on the ‘Keyboard Viewer’. This will display a flag next to the clock on the menu bar at the top of your screen. Click on the flag and then ‘Enable Keyboard Viewer’. A window then appears with displaying the layout of your keyboard as such:
Now press and hold the ‘Alt’ key. The characters in the layout display will change to accordingly show all the different key combinations possible on the keyboard. If there is a chaaracter on the layout display you want to use, you then go into the program into which you want to key in the character and press ‘Alt’ + ‘the corresponding key’.
e.g. ‘Alt’ + ‘m’ will result in a ‘μ’ character.
The same works when holding down the ‘Alt’ and ‘Shift’ key:
Note: The above have been carried out on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and may not work on previous versions of OS X.
3 Responses to “Typing Special Characters on a MAC”
By Ray Galbreth on Jan 4, 2007 | Reply
How do you type the symbol for a long o? (An o with a straight line over it) like you see in dictionaries to indicate how to pronounce the letter (as “”oh”)?
By Ash on Jan 4, 2007 | Reply
I’m guessing it’s this character you mean: ÅŒ (O with a macron)
I’ve not been able to find a keyboard key press combination for it but you should be able to insert the character from within character palette.
Load up ‘System Preferences’ and click ‘International’
Under the ‘Input Menu’ tab, check the box for ‘Character Palette’
This should bring up a flag in the menu bar (top of the screen, just left of the clock). Click on the flag and select ‘Show Character Palette’
You will find the O with macron character under ‘Accented Latin’ characters when viewing ‘by Category’.
Simply load up the document where you want to insert the character and place your cursor at the desired point. Then double click on the character you want to insert from the Character Palette.
This will automatically type the desired character into your document.
Hope this helps.