Hoppo Bumpo (n): A children's game. Played by folding one's arms and hopping on one leg. Aim is to bump opponents, so that they lose their balance. Last person standing wins.


November 01, 2008

What a character (a tiny tutorial)



During the past few weeks I have had a little run of writing blog posts employing characters not found on my Australian computer keyboard. On the first occasion it was an innocuous pound currency symbol (£). Then yesterday I needed to add two letters e with acute accents (for Récupération Nathalie Brault).

In my travels I noticed that Bellgirl was also looking for a c with a cedilla (ç). If you too are searching for that special character (alpha-numeric, not human) here is a quick and easy trick for PC users*.

Look up the four digit number of the character here. Then hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and type the number (including the zero) using the numeric keypad. Once you release the Alt key, your character will appear.

Use this to create all sorts of nice characters on your blog: from fractions (¼ ½ ¾) to copyright and trademark symbols (© ® ™) to currency symbols (€ ¢ ¥) to various accented characters (ú õ ÿ) to a host of other cool stuff (‰ ¶ ÷ • º ‡). You are not restricted to using this this keyboard trick for your blog - it will generally work in other applications too.

* As I'm not a Mac user, I'm not sure how you might do the equivalent. Any comments with instructions are most welcome!

16 comments:

  1. Handy tip!

    I just googled some Mac instructions:
    http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/172

    Apple also has web support with instructions specific to your particular operating system:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1518

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  2. :)) you discover such funny things!!!

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  3. Well I'm a windows user and it doesn't work but I've blogged about it.

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  4. Thanks Sparkly Green Knickers - that's great. I was a bit worried about doing a search, then not being able to test. Maybe I should go buy a Mac as well for these occassions. I'm sure Mr HB would be thrilled!

    Nathalie, I think I might know why it didn't work. I will edit the post to say you need to use the numeric keypad. Sorry! I'll blame that ommission on blogging so late!

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  5. that is so cool! Thanks a bunch

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  6. Ah HAAA!! I've been wondering how to do that. I knew how to insert symbols in Word documents... now I'll be inserting symbols all over the place!!!

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  7. Excellent work. I've been inserting via html. Thanks for this.

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  8. Thanks HB for the special characters. I've copied your fab table for future reference.

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  9. Aha! JNust what I need- all the time! ™‰÷©‡®•º¶ Wheeeeeeeeee!

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  10. fantastic, I've been wondering how to do this! Thanks!

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  11. oooh thank you! now I can write in real German, not some weird anglicised version!

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  12. Yay for alt key madness!
    My favourite alt numeral combination is this one '♥' It gets slightly overused on my livejournal, but alas my wordpress doesn't seem to like it!

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  13. very late comment, i know - but just had to say thanks. I get frustrated when I can't use the 'degrees'symbol. problem solved!

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  14. Liesl, this is brilliant! I've been searching for a way to make the cents sign ¢ for eons...
    Just my 2¢!

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