A more techie Business Booster this week, however one that contains information that's proved useful to me, so I pass it on in the hope that you'll find it useful too. Special characters are those extra little 'bits and bobs' you find yourself needing from time to time, for example, ©, ®, ™, ‰, @. This Business Booster tells you how to find them and insert them into your documents.

The background problem
A few years ago inserting the copyright symbol © into a document was a real pain. The computer software industry recognised this, and companies like Microsoft improved their products, so that nowadays inserting © into a Word document isn't really that difficult at all. However, what if you're not using Word (or similar)? Say you're editing a raw HTML document (like this Business Booster), or engaged in chat session on Skype - then what?

The packaged approach - a quick review
For those of you need to be reminded, a quick review of how to insert these special characters in MS Word, using Office 2003 as an example:

1. Position the cursor at the point where you want the symbol to appear
2. Select 'Insert' from the main, top line menu
3. Select 'Symbol...' from the drop-down menu
4. From within the window that opens, select the 'Special Characters' tab
5. Highlight the desired character from the list and press 'Insert'

You'll also notice that these characters have special shortcut keys associated with them, for example the © symbol shortcut keys are 'Alt+Ctrl+C'. These shortcut keys are specific to Word though, so cannot be used outside a Word document.

Special characters - the ALT key route (Windows users)
The basic point to be made is that all these special characters can be accessed via the following process:

1. Position the cursor at the point where you want the special character to appear
2. Activate the numeric key section of the keyboard (by pressing the Num Lock key)
3. Press (and hold down) the Alt key
4. Type the numerical sequence associated with the special character you want
5. Release the Alt key
6. The character is inserted

The only thing you know need to know is the numerical sequences associated with each special character. This can be easily obtained by doing an internet search on 'alternative character codes'. You'll find many references to which you can refer - here's one I find really useful. I've noted some of the common codes below:

• Alt+0169 = ©
• Alt+0174 = ®
• Alt+0153 = ™
• Alt+64 = @
• Alt+37 = %
• Alt+60 = <
• Alt+62 = >

Special characters for Macintosh users
There is a similar process for Mac users, using the 'Option' key in combination with others, for example:

• Option+G = ©
• Option+R = ®
• Option+2 = ™

You can find out more about Mac codes here.

That's it folks, 'Special Character Codes' in 504 words. I hope you've found this useful - please don't hesitate to let know what you'd like to read about.

Chris Davidson
Editor, Professional Speakers Journal
editor@professionalspeakersjournal.com