How to Enter ANSI Characters from the Keyboard

Category: Fonts | Comment 2 Comments | Read 19671 Read | Posted Posted: VistaTrick | 10 November 2007

Figure 7-1 shows you all of the characters in the Windows ANSI character set. The characters are numbered 32 through 127 and 0128 through 0255. The numbers above 127, representing characters that don't appear on a U.S. style keyboard, required you in previous versions of Windows to enter a leading zero to access them via the numeric keypad.
(More on this shortly.) The leading zero is no longer necessary if you're using the keypad to enter these characters in Vista.

The first glyph in each row represents the character you’ll see when an ordinary text font, such as Arial or Times New Roman, is selected. The second glyph is visible if Windows’ Symbol font is selected. The third glyph is from Wingdings, a whimsical dingbats font Microsoft threw into the mix to add some spice to its first rollout of TrueType.

If you’re using a version of Windows from Windows 3.1 on up, and it has a Western code page configured, then you have these characters. They aren’t much. U.S. users don’t even see a way on their keyboards to type a symbol for the pound currency (£) or a registered trademark (®).

But they’re there, and they do the job if you’re writing a document in a major Western European language. Many useful characters besides letters and numbers are in there, too. And they’re not so hard to use, if you know the secret.

Figure 7-1: The Windows ANSI character set. This chart shows all the characters in the three major font types that are present in every release of Windows going back to version 3.1.

Figure 7-1 (continued)

We’ll start with the most universal way to access ANSI characters from the keyboard and move on to other methods that are more application-specific.

Alt+Number Works in All Windows Apps

Every Windows application that supports TrueType fonts can handle the so-called Alt+number method of entering ANSI characters. This is often cryptically referred to in computer manuals using shorthand such as, “To enter a copyright symbol, type Alt+0169.” Here’s the routine:

1.   Make sure your NumLock key is on (NumLock light is lighted).
2.   Hold down your Alt key.
3.   Type the character number shown in Figure 7-1 on the numeric keypad. (On lap- tops, this can be done by turning on the NumLock key, even though the numer- als may share alphabetical characters on the keyboard.). In Vista, it’s not necessary to type a leading zero (0) for characters above 127.
4.   Release the Alt key. The desired character should instantly appear.

Of course, if you’re trying to insert a Wingdings symbol into your document, it won’t look right unless you previously switched the current font in your application to Wingdings. That’s okay, though. You can format the character with your desired font either before or after you enter it.

Tip: If you don’t know a particular character’s number, and you don’t have Figure 7-1 handy, you can use Windows’ CharMap utility to visually search for characters. To do this, use the Start menu to run Charmap.exe. This little applet lets you select any Windows font and scroll through its character set until you see something you want. Make a note of the character’s location so you don’t need to launch CharMap every
time.

The “Dead Key” Method Is the Fastest

Americans who want to include accented characters and other foreign-language symbols in documents should take advantage of shortcuts that are built into their applications. Microsoft Word for Windows includes a series of “dead keys” for this purpose. These are Ctrl+key combinations you press, followed by an ordinary letter that’s present on every U.S. keyboard.

In Word, pressing and releasing Ctrl+’ (Ctrl+Apostrophe) and then pressing the letter e inserts into your document an é with an acute accent, as in résumé. The Ctrl+’ key combi- nation is the “dead key” that turns any vowel you subsequently type into its acute-accent equivalent.

Figure 7-2 shows the 12 kinds of characters you can insert into documents using Word’s built-in dead keys. Many other programs also support these shortcuts.

Figure 7-2: It’s easy to enter accented characters into documents using the 12 “dead key”
shortcuts that are built into Microsoft Word and many other applications.

When All Else Fails, Head for the Symbol Menu

As a last resort, you can search for and insert most special characters using dialog boxes that are built into many applications. In Microsoft Word 97/2000/2002/2003, for example, you do this by clicking Insert➪Symbol.

Word’s Symbol dialog box shows you a scrolling window containing every character in Windows’ Symbol font, or any other font you select. You can also insert special characters from Windows’ middle ANSI character range of characters numbered 128 through 159, such as an em dash ( — ) or trademark sign (™).

Watch out for these latter symbols, however. Word, especially older versions, is notorious for its misuse of these characters, as handy as they might be. See the accompanying Secret about the proper way to access 128 through 159.

Characters 128 to 159 Are Bad for You
The middle ANSI positions numbered 128 to 159 were reserved by standards bodies years ago for control codes, as explained previously. The symbols that Microsoft put in these positions don’t show up correctly when your document is opened on a Mac or Linux system, or if you paste the text into a Web form or HTML document. Unfortunately, many versions of Microsoft Word automatically convert commonly typed expressions into symbols numbered 128 to 159. Word’s so-called AutoCorrect feature silently turns ordinary ASCII characters such as (tm) and quotation marks into gylphs such as ™ and curly quotes. These characters may not display or print correctly when your document is opened by computer users whose equipment varies from yours.

To avoid this problem, make sure the middle ANSI characters are always entered using their decimal or hex Unicode values. A conversion chart for the characters between ANSI 128 and 159 is shown in Figure 7-3. You must, of course, also select a font that con- tains these Unicode positions for these characters to display and print. All of Windows’ fonts that support WGL4 do contain these characters in the correct Unicode positions.
continued

If you need to distribute your document, you must save your fonts with the file so they display and print for other computer users. “The document you save could be your own” tip later in this chapter explains how to do this.

If you can’t save the fonts within a file you’re going to distribute, avoid using ANSI characters 128 through 159. Use plain-text ASCII equivalents instead, such as (TM) in regular parentheses and straight quote marks.

To make sure this problem never bites you, consider turning off Word’s AutoCorrect feature entirely. In Word 2000/2002/2003, for instance, click Tools➪AutoCorrect and turn off all the check boxes you find in the resulting dialog box.

Figure 7-3: Don’t use ANSI values for characters 128 to 159, if possible. Instead, select a WGL4 or Unicode font and use these characters’ decimal or hex Unicode val- ues. Ways to enter these values are explained in the Unicode section of this chapter.

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Comments

Clem { 22 July 2008 }

Thank you

jan { 03 May 2008 }

I have some how managed to set my question mark key and apostrophy key as è and é. I did not mean to do it and donèt even know how it happened to fix it. I am using windows Vistas.
Please tell me how to reset it.

Thank you

Diger Sayfalar: 1.

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How to Enter ANSI Characters from the Keyboard

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