Most likely, at least once you have encountered the need to insert a sign or symbol into MS Word that is not on your computer keyboard. This could be, for example, an em dash, a degree symbol or a proper fraction, or much more. And if in some cases (dashes and fractions) the autocorrect function comes to the rescue, then in others everything turns out to be much more complicated.
We have already written about inserting some special characters and symbols, in this article we will talk about how to quickly and conveniently add any of them to an MS Word document.
1. Click in the place in the document where you want to insert the symbol.
2. Go to the “Insert” tab and click the “Symbol” button there, which is located in the “Symbols” group.
3. Perform the required action:
- Select the desired symbol from the drop-down menu, if it is there.
- If the desired symbol is not in this small window, select “Other symbols” and find it there. Click on the required symbol, click the “Insert” button and close the dialog box.
Note: The Symbol dialog box contains many different symbols, grouped by theme and style. In order to quickly find the desired symbol, you can select in the “Set” section specific to this symbol, for example, “Mathematical operators” in order to find and insert mathematical symbols. You can also change fonts in the appropriate section, because many of them also have different characters that differ from the standard set.
4. The symbol will be added to the document.
Inserting a special character1. Click in the place in the document where you want to add a special character.
2. In the “Insert” tab, open the “Symbols” button menu and select “Other symbols”.
3. Go to the “Special characters” tab.
4. Select the required symbol by clicking on it. Click the “Insert” button and then “Close”.
5. The special character will be added to the document.
Note: Please note that in the “Special Characters” section of the “Character” window, in addition to the special characters themselves, you can also see hotkey combinations that can be used to add them, as well as set up autocorrect for a specific character.
Inserting Unicode CharactersInserting Unicode characters is not much different from inserting symbols and special characters, except for one important advantage that greatly simplifies your workflow. More detailed instructions on how to do this are provided below.
Selecting a Unicode character in the Character window1. Click in the place in the document where you want to add the Unicode character.
2. In the “Symbol” button menu (Insert tab), select “Other symbols”.
3. In the “Font” section, select the required font.
4. In the “From” section, select “Unicode (hex)”.
5. If the “Set” field is active, select the required character set.
6. Having selected the desired symbol, click on it and click “Insert”. Close the dialog box.
7. The Unicode character will be added to the location you specified in the document.
Lesson: How to add a check mark in Word
Add a Unicode character using codeAs mentioned above, Unicode characters have one important advantage. It consists in the ability to add characters not only through the “Symbol” window, but also from the keyboard. To do this, you need to enter the Unicode character code (indicated in the “Character” window in the “Code” section), and then press the key combination.
Obviously, it is impossible to remember all the codes of these signs, but you can definitely learn the most necessary, frequently used ones, or at least write them down somewhere and keep them at hand.
1. Left-click where you want to add a Unicode character.
2. Enter the Unicode character code.
Note: The Unicode character code in Word always contains letters; they must be entered in capital case (capital case) in the English layout.
3. Without moving the cursor from this place, press the “ALT+X” keys.
4. A Unicode character will appear in the location you specified.
That's all, now you know how to insert special characters, symbols or Unicode characters into Microsoft Word. We wish you positive results and high productivity in your work and education.
The most unusual and frequently used sign by students is “§”, which is used to indicate a paragraph. It includes two letters "S" connected. Translated from Latin, this abbreviation means “section mark” or signum sectionis. This designation is used to identify chapters and subsections. It helps students especially well when they have to write a lot of term papers and reports.
How to put an icon in WordIf you are writing an essay or some other article and you need to indicate subparagraphs, you can use this code. There are two installation methods. This is a table of symbols in Microsoft Word or type the desired code on the numeric keypad while holding down “Alt”. And now in more detail.
Microsoft Word has a special table that you can use. To do this, open Word. Find the “Insert” tab and run the mouse cursor to the upper right corner. There you will see the last block called “Symbols”, consisting of two tabs - “Equation” and “Symbol”. Click on the “Symbol” icon.
A table will open. If you don’t find the code you need in it, then at the very bottom of the menu there is a tab “ other symbols”. 
Click on it. And we are looking for it. When you find it, click on it to highlight it. 
Then, click on “Insert” at the bottom of the block. And now exit the menu. In the document you will see a display of the code.
If you don’t want to look for where it is in Word, then you can take the easier route. By holding down “ALT” we type the code number 21 and the paragraph designation appears on your page.
HotkeysIf you need to quickly insert it without being distracted by searching, you can add it to the list of hotkeys. This method works well for students and those who often write essays or term papers. How to do it:
- Then, in the “Specify keyboard shortcut” submenu, find and click on the “ New keyboard shortcut” button.
- Now click on the buttons that are convenient for you to call this icon.
- Click the “Assign” button.
Now you can easily type paragraph encoding using your keyboard.
How to find it on the InternetTo do this, you copy the image of this code and paste it into the page or table you need. In addition, you can stretch this sign or, on the contrary, compress it.
If you don’t want to look for it on your computer in Word, you can type “paragraph mark” into a search engine and copy and paste the resulting image into the text you need.
The easiest way to do this is, of course, using the “ALT” button and the numbers on the keyboard 21. Or transfer it to memory for hot keys. This way you will spend less time looking for that character that is not on the keyboard. The main thing is to remember the combination of buttons for insertion.
When creating technical diagrams and drawings in Word, a huge number of special signs and symbols are used. But, as you know, not all characters can be entered from the keyboard. For example, there are several ways to add a diameter icon in Word: by inserting symbols and using the symbol code. Below we will take a closer look and look at the pictures.
Inserting a "diameter" symbolTo insert a diameter icon in a document you need to:
In MS Word, special characters have their own individual code. You can use a code and a keyboard shortcut to insert a diameter symbol in your document. Go to “Insert” - “Symbols” - “Other Symbols”. In the “Set” indicate “Additional Latin-1”. Find the diameter sign and click on it. In the symbols window, just below, there is a line “Sign code”, opposite which the code is written. Remember it and close the “Symbol” window.
Write this code in the place where you need the diameter symbol and press the key combination Alt+X (x is an English letter).
Using the methods described above, you can quickly write the diameter designation in Word.
How to insert characters into Word text
diameter, accent, quotation marks or apostrophe...
Selecting a symbol from a table is a classic way to insert symbolic characters into Word text: place the cursor in the desired place in the text, open the Word “Insert” tab-menu, click sequentially, as in the figure: “Symbols”, “Symbol”, “Other symbols”. A “Symbol Table” will appear, in which you need to click (click) on the required symbol and press the “Insert” button. The selected character will appear in the text of the Word document. To view the entire table of Word symbols, use the side slider.
Selecting and inserting symbols from a table is a simple but time-consuming procedure. The symbol table of the Word text editor is crammed with all sorts of rubbish, in which it is simply impossible to quickly find the desired icon.
Mister Unicode allows you to insert printable and non-printable characters and symbols from the keyboard. Unicode character codes (keyboard shortcuts) are supported by almost all text editors, from Notepad to Photoshop. In the Word symbol table, the code of the selected symbol is displayed in a special window (6), see Fig.
Apparently, the words “typing keys” send half of the Internet’s inhabitants into a trance. However, if a person is over five years old and already knows letters and numbers, there is nothing difficult about it. Quite the contrary - there is a quiet thrill from the wild saving of time. The codes of frequently used symbols can be written down on a piece of paper and stupidly trampled on the keyboard, without going into the details of all sorts of menus.
To insert the required sign or symbol, place the cursor in the desired place in the text, hold down (press, trample, do not release) the “Alt” key and, in the numeric part of the “keyboard”, sequentially type the symbol code. Release the “Alt” key - the required character will immediately appear in the text.
Codes of some popular symbols:
- “English double quotes”: 0147 and 0148
- ‘English single quotes’: 0145 and 0146
(right English single quote
used in Ukrainian as an apostrophe:
subvir'ya, suzir'ya, bur'yan) - “Russian quotes (Christmas trees)”: 0171 and 0187
- “quote feet”: 0132 and 0147
- - single dash: 0150
- — em dash: 0151
A broader picture of the example of using the keyboard when entering characters is given by the Word symbol table in Unicode:
Example of using a table:
alt + 1 = ☺; alt + 2 = ☻; alt + 3 = ; alt + 4 = ♦; alt + 5 = ♣;
alt + 6 = ♠; alt + 7 = .; alt + 8 = ◘; alt + 9 = ○; alt + 10 = ◙; etc.
The tens are on the left and the ones are on the top. To insert a symbol, place the cursor in the text, hold down the “Alt” key and, without releasing it, enter the symbol code. After that, release the “Alt” key, and the required icon will appear in the text line.
Attention! Enter the character code exclusively on the right numeric part of the keyboard. At the same time, it must be turned on (activated)!
Find and enable (activate)
right numeric keypad
Right numeric keypad - the right numeric keypad on a regular computer keyboard. These keys are assigned functions that are not available to the upper numeric keypad, in particular, entering a digital code. By default, the right numeric keypad is inactive. To activate the number pad, use the “Num Lock” key. Each repeated press of “Num Lock”, in turn, activates/deactivates (turns on/off) the right numeric keys. In laptops (especially netbooks), the right number pad is often missing. Numeric keys are either combined with the main keyboard, or the function of entering digital codes is carried out by other keys on the main unit. There may also not be an activating “Num Lock” key on laptops.
However, the right numeric keypad may not completely disappear from the computing device. It is simply hidden and deactivated for the convenience of the user. The surest way to find out how to enable and activate the functions of the right number pad is to ask the manufacturer.
Otherwise, call the “On-Screen Keyboard”, which is always, everywhere and in everyone. The on-screen keyboard is located something like this: Menu “Start / (Service, Accessories) / Accessibility / On-screen keyboard.”
The on-screen keyboard usually displays the actual state of the real keyboard. The on-screen keyboard may not have a right number pad or a Num Lock key. Not scary. Press the “Options” key on the on-screen keyboard (see figure above). A dialog box will open where you need to check the box to enable the numeric keypad. Click “OK” - the digital block will appear on the screen. Press “Num Lock” - the keyboard is activated.
An accent mark is inserted separately in the text of Word:
- Place the cursor after the desired letter
- We dial (print) the symbol code: 0300 or 0301 (tilt left/right).
The code numbers will appear directly in the text.
We don’t touch, we don’t remove the cursor. - Press “Alt” and then “X”
(in Russian layout - “Ch”) - An accent icon will appear above our letter.
At the moment, only Word supports placing accent marks. In other text editors, you can insert an accent mark by copying it ready-made from Word text. In Notepad, the copied character and accents are not saved to a file...
Use Notepad++...
At the moment, Word does not support the diameter sign, nor do all other text editors. Instead of the classic diameter sign (crossed out circle), it is widely proposed to use the good old crossed out zero: Ø Ø. Visually, it is practically indistinguishable, and programmers have one less headache. They (the programmers) came up with the crossed out zero solely to distinguish the number 0 (zero) from the letter O. And then there’s this terrible diameter sign (a crossed out circle), completely indistinguishable from a crossed out zero. As a result, the diameter sign has sunk into oblivion. The only way to insert a real diameter symbol (a crossed out circle) into Word text is to copy it from old documents when this symbol was supported by a text editor. Download:word.zip (downloads: 93) to copy the diameter sign. As for the crossed out zero, it is entered using a set of keys like: “Alt” + 0248 (lower case - ø), “Alt” + 0216 (upper case - Ø). You need to type hotkeys, certainly in the English keyboard layout. Otherwise there will be a letter Ш!!!
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You can easily insert a check mark, fraction, or other symbol into Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel workbooks.
The most important thing to understand is that when inserting symbols, fractions, special characters, or international characters, the font you use is critical. Not all fonts contain the same characters, for example, the Elephant font does not contain fraction symbols, while the Verdana font does. Thus, it is very important to use the right font to find the right symbol or sign that you need.
What do you want to insert?If you want to use ASCII characters or Unicode characters to insert characters from the keyboard, see: .
These are static symbols. If you want interactive checkboxes that you can select and deselect, see Add checkboxes or radio buttons (Excel) or Create a checklist in Word.
Symbol, such as currency (¥), music (♫), or flags (✔)
Tip: If you want to make your character larger or smaller, select it and use the Font Size option.
A special character, such as em dashes or paragraph marks (§)
Fractions (1/3, 2/5) Some fractions (1/4, 1/2 and 3/4) are automatically replaced by the corresponding symbols (¼, ½, ¾) as you type. However, others remain the same (1/3, 2/3, 1/5, etc.), so if you want to insert them as symbols, you will need to use the symbol insertion process.
Only a small number of common fractions have symbols that can be replaced. For more unusual fractions, such as 8/9, you can determine the approximate value of the symbol by specifying the numerator as superscript and the denominator as subscript. For more information, see Insert superscript or subscript text.
International characters, such as ¿ or üIf you plan to enter text in other languages, we recommend switching your keyboard layout to the selected language. For more information, see Turn on or switch the keyboard layout language.
There are almost always keyboard shortcuts for individual characters in Office. For example:
CTRL + SHIFT + ALT +? serves to insert ¿
CTRL + SHIFT + ~: after entering "a" allows you to insert ã.
CTRL+SHIFT+: after entering "u" allows you to insert ü.
For a complete guide to using the keyboard to insert international characters, see: Inserting National Alphabets Using Keyboard Shortcuts.
Insert a checkbox or other character using the keyboard using ASCII and Unicode codesYou can also enter the character code using the keyboard. Symbols and special characters are inserted using either ASCII or Unicode character sets. You can determine what exactly you need to look for in the code for the symbol.
Go to the Insert tab in the Ribbon and click Symbol > More Symbols, just like when you are going to insert a symbol using the dialog box.
Scroll up or down the list to find the symbol you want; note that you may need to change the font or subset to find it.
Tip: The Segoe UI Symbol font contains a very large set of Unicode characters that you can choose from.
At the bottom right you will see the Character Code and From: fields. The character code is what you need to enter to insert a given character from the keyboard, and from: tells you what kind of character it will be. If from: reports "Unicode (hex)", it is a Unicode character. If from: reports "Symbol (Decimal)", it is an ASCII character.
Enter the character code where you want to insert the Unicode character.
Press ALT+X to convert the code to a symbol.
Adviсe:
If you don't get the character you expected, make sure you select the correct font.
If you place a Unicode character immediately after another character, for example you place the code 0300 immediately after the letter "a" such as "a0300", Word may assume that you are trying to insert a character with the 5-character code "a0300". But if you really need only 0300 to be converted to a character, which you can do, select 0300 with your mouse and then press ALT+X. After this, Word will convert only the selected text (0300) to a character (in this case "a") ̀̀̀.
Notes:
To do this, you must use the numeric keypad; You will not be able to enter the code using the keys at the top of the keyboard. Make sure the NUM LOCK button is pressed.
All ASCII character codes will be stored at four digits. If the code for the desired character is shorter than four digits, you need to add leading zeros to achieve the desired length. For example: 249 is entered as 0249. 85 is entered as 0085, etc.
Important: Do not skip step 1, otherwise you may end up with an incorrect character when pasting the code.
Don't forget to change the font to the original one after inserting the symbol.