Mac hints and tips
Your favourite characters (10.4/5)
There are more characters and symbols in common use than there are keys on the keyboard and it is not possible to make them all acvailable from a keypress. Even when doubling up some keys, like the numeric keys, with various symbols. For exmple, where's the key to display a copyright symbol? It can be very frustrating when you need to enter these characters into a document.
There are some characters that can only be accessed using the Character Palette tool. This can be added to the menu bar to provide access to characters that are not availale on the keyboard. Click the Apple logo at the left-hand side of the menu bar and select System Preferences. Click International and then click the Input Menu tab. Tick the box at the bottom labelled Show input menu in menu bar.
OK, you've seen this tip before, but let's take things a bit further. Now you've got the Character Palette in the menu bar, click it (it's a flag icon), and select Character Palette. Finding the character you want to insert into a document can be frustrating.
Where is the copyright symbol? Where is the hash character? The characters are organised into categories, but would you put the hash into the miscellaneous or the punctuation categories? (It's actually in punctuation.)
You might need to hunt around for a particular character, but once you have found it, it is a good idea to add it to your favourites if you think you might need to use it quite often.
Select the character and click the Actions button in the bottom left-hand corner of the Characters window. Select Add to favorites. Select the Favorites tab at the top of the window to see your favourite characters.
If you close the Characters window with the Favorites tab selected, you'll go straight to your favourites the next tim you display the Character Palette. It saves you having to hunt for commonly used characters.
