Many have seen unusual and beautiful characters decorating a name, message or page on social networks, but only a few know where they come from.
On the Windows operating system, characters that are not on the keyboard are encrypted as numbers. Pressing a number in conjunction with the Alt key gives a special character that will change depending on the number.
Insert hidden characters
Many people ask: "How to enter characters that are not on the keyboard?" You can do this in various ways:
- using a character table;
- Alt combinations with numbers
- copying from the Internet;
- copying from text editing software (Microsoft Office);
- special online services.
table of symbols
Above is a table of characters that are not on the keyboard. With its help, you can easily insert the symbol you like into the text, copy it to social networks.
How to open a character table
Opening a symbol table is very simple. First of all, you need to click "Start" and in the window to search on the computer enter the phrase "Symbol Table".
Next step: click on the phrase found.
The symbol table can be easily found, knowing its location in the system. The path is as follows:
- "Start".
- All programs.
- Standard.
- Utility.
- Table of symbols.
In order not to constantly perform a lot of operations and mouse clicks, you can pin a link to the table on the "Taskbar" or in the "Start" menu. This is done like this: the cursor is hovered over the icon of an open program on the lower task bar, the right mouse button is pressed to open additional functions, then the left-right mouse button must be clicked on the penultimate line (fix the program).
Using the character table
In the table, you can change the font, see the help, and also copy any of the presented characters to the clipboard. To copy them, you need to double-click on the one you like, click on the "Copy" button. To insert into the text you need to place the cursor in the part of the text where you want to place the element, click on the "Insert" menu, called by the right mouse button. Or do the same with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl and V.
Additional Character Table Options
The functionality of the program in question contains additional parameters, for which you need to check the corresponding box. The check box is located under the "For Copy" line. The main advantage of additional parameters is the presence of "Grouping". It allows you to very quickly search for the necessary element to insert into the text by category (monetary, punctuation, arrows, numerical, technical). For grouping to work properly, Unicode ranges must be present.
For example, you can take the infinity sign. To find it, you need to go into the grouping and select the desired category (for the infinity sign, these are mathematical operators). Double click on it and copy to clipboard.
In the "Cash" category in the grouping, you can find any banknotes, for example, euro or ruble.
In the "Punctuation" category are presented such signs as paragraph, degree, exclamation and interrogative inverted.
Alt and Number Combinations
The most popular symbols on social networks are hearts. Their and other unique characters can be found in the table, which contains the codes of characters that are not on the keyboard.
In order for the symbol you need to appear on the screen, you must click on the specified number, holding Alt. In order not to lose such a useful table, it is recommended to add it to your browser bookmarks or save it to your computer. For example, the keyboard shortcut Alt and 1 gives a smiley character.
Copy from the web
A very popular way to get the necessary characters that are not on the keyboard is to copy them from the Web. This method is very simple and understandable for everyone, it consists of 2 actions:
- finding the desired character or smiley by creating a query in the search bar of the browser;
- copying and pasting to the right place (text, message, status).
Symbols from Microsoft Office Word
You can also find original characters that are not on the keyboard in the very popular software from Microsoft Office Word. This method is similar to that described previously. Its essence is that first we open the Word program (it is installed on almost every computer), look for the "Insert" tab, in the menu we find the "Insert Symbol" button. After that, a window appears with a huge number of different characters. In order to take the character you like from “Word” and paste it into another place, you need to paste the required symbol on an empty sheet of “Word”, then select it and copy it (copying can be done using the Ctrl and C keys).
Online services
To diversify your page on VKontakte, tweets and posts on Facebook, just to please your chat partner will help online services that provide the ability to quickly and conveniently select and copy your favorite character, emoticon or sign.
Everything is very simple and clear here. Each button is a specific symbol. After clicking on any of them, the selected symbol appears in the window at the top. Below the window there are buttons with which you can change the characters (font, size) or perform some action (copy, tweet, etc.). When you click Copy, the character (s) in the selection window are copied to the computer clipboard. Only then from the buffer does the user insert them into the message.
Hidden Character Categories
All existing characters that are not on the keyboard can be divided into the following categories:
- numbers;
- fractions;
- Zodiac signs;
- musical notes;
- symbols representing weather or precipitation;
- card;
- chess;
- snowflakes;
- flowers
- emotions
- arrows;
- others.
People, knowing all categories, can both write with characters that are not on the keyboard and insert them into the text singly.