How to print special characters on a computer. Symbols on the keyboard: we want to type everything

Greetings, dear readers! Today I will show you how to type special characters on your keyboard using the Alt key. If you didn’t quite understand from the title of the article what we’re talking about, I’ll explain in more detail.

There are symbols that are simply not on the keyboard, but they can be used quite often (paragraph icon, arrow, suit, heart). The question immediately arises of how to write this or that character that is not on the keyboard. How to do this will be discussed in this article.

Here are examples of such symbols:

☻☺ ♣♠◘○♀♪♂☼ ↕☼↓→§

Naturally, these are not all symbols; there are many more of them. You can find a complete table with these symbols just below.

And now I will tell you how to print these characters.

So, already from the name it is clear that we will use the Alt key! But we will need other keys too!

In the picture below you can see all the keys we will need and where they are:

So, to print this or that character, you need to hold down the Alt key and, using the additional panel with numbers, type the code of the character we need (character codes can be taken from the table below). Moreover, it is important to follow the sequence, that is, if you first press 1 and then 2, then a symbol with number 12 will pop up, and if you do the opposite: first 2, and then 1, then a completely different symbol with number 21 will pop up.

For example, the emoticon code (☺) is 1. This means that to print an emoticon, you need to press the Alt key and, without releasing it, click on “1” in the additional panel with numbers, then you need to release the Alt key and the symbol will be printed.

To type an arrow (→) with code 26, you need to hold down the Alt key, then alternately press first “2”, then “6”, and then release the Alt key. The symbol will be printed immediately.

Here is a table of the most common characters with their numbers:

This was the easiest way to print these characters, but not the only one.

There is also such a thing as a symbol table. No, we are not talking about the yellow table above. Every Windows computer has this Symbol Table application.

This application is located in this location:

This folder contains a bunch of all sorts of system files, including “charmap”. To avoid looking for it in that giant list, use the hotkey Ctrl + F and type “charmap” into the search. After launching the application, the following table will open:

You need to find and select the symbol you need, then copy it from the bottom line and paste it into the place you need. Quite convenient too!

No computer or laptop user can do without alphabetic characters on the keyboard, entered using the appropriate keys. Almost every key has 2 letters - English at the top and Russian at the bottom, i.e. The keyboard has 26 letters of the English alphabet and 33 letters of the Russian alphabet. Moreover, these can be both lowercase and uppercase letters, which are typed using the Shift key.

There are punctuation marks in both English and Russian layouts, although they are located in different places on the keyboard. It is convenient when working with Russian text that a period and a comma are the same key, which is located in the bottom row of the most recent letter keys. Only the comma is typed in combination with the Shift key. And in the English layout, a dot is a key with the Russian letter Y, and a comma is B. So, to enter these punctuation marks, you do not need to switch from one font to another.

We use digital signs or numbers not only for calculations, but also in text to indicate various numerical data. In this case, you can use both the upper numeric row of the keyboard and the additional numeric pad (small numeric keypad) located on the right side of the keyboard.

The basic signs of arithmetic operations (plus “+”, minus “-”, multiplication “*”, division “/”), located on the small numeric keypad by analogy with a familiar calculator, so they are convenient to use when making calculations. But if you just need to print the equal sign “=”, and not find out the result of the calculations, then you will not find such a sign there. It is located in the top number row after the number 0, one key later.

What frequently used characters are on the keyboard?

If you look closely at the keyboard, you can see that many characters are hidden in the number row and on the right side of the letter rows, the last keys. To enter characters instead of letters or numbers when printing, you need to switch to upper case using the Shift key.

If you go in order, starting with the number 1, then in this way when printing Russian texts you enter:

1) exclamation point “!”;
2) opening and closing quotation marks at the beginning and end of the phrase “...”;
3) then, if necessary, the number sign “No”;
4) semicolon “;”;
5) "%";
6) colon “:”;
7) question mark “?”;
8) the asterisk “*”, which is also used as a multiplication sign in computer calculations;
9) round opening “(”;
10) round closing bracket “)” on the key with the number 0;
11) a hyphen and a “-” sign – in the computer version they look the same. The dash character (longer) appears automatically using spaces before and after this character in text programs or is entered using a special code.
12) the = sign and the + sign in upper case, i.e. in combination with the Shift key.

It is noteworthy that the exclamation point, %, *, parentheses are found in both Russian and English keyboard layouts on the same keys.

But some characters exist only in the English layout. For example, square […] and curly (…) brackets, which are located on keys with the Russian letters X (opening) and Ъ (closing), “>” (key with the Russian letter Yu) and less “Rarely used characters on the keyboard

In everyday life, an ordinary user rarely has to use characters that exist only in the English layout: different versions of quotation marks “…”, '…’, `…`, dash “|”, forward “/” and backslash “\” slash, tilde “~ " But the paragraph sign “§” or the degree “°” would be nice , but they are not on the keyboard. You have to enter some characters into the text in a different way.

When writing, not only letters are used, but also punctuation marks: period, colon, comma, exclamation mark, dash, etc. In addition to punctuation marks, there are special symbols on a laptop keyboard - for example, a hash mark, a dollar sign, and a line for an underscore, which can be made from a dash. In this sense, the laptop keyboard is completely identical to a regular computer keyboard, offering a similar set of punctuation marks.

Signs and special characters on the keyboard

The operation of a laptop keyboard usually does not require the installation of additional software. The only exception is the functioning of “hot keys”, for which it is necessary to install special utilities downloaded from the manufacturer’s website. The remaining buttons, including those that allow you to add a dash or any other punctuation mark, work on the drivers preinstalled in the BIOS.

Depending on the selected layout, some punctuation buttons change their location. You can safely use an exclamation mark, a dash, and an opening and closing parenthesis. Even a simple dash turns into an underscore when you press the Shift key.

Most punctuation marks and special characters should be placed this way by first holding down the Shift button. If, for example, a colon is drawn above the number “6” on the right, then you can put it on the Russian layout by pressing Shift. If the layout is English, then the character that is located on the button on the left will be printed. To help you better understand the difference, here is a table with all the punctuation marks in Cyrillic (Russian) and Latin (English) layouts:

If you need to insert characters into the text that are not on the keyboard, then use a special table that shows combinations of the Alt key with numeric codes.

Using such tables (they are different), you can insert almost any symbol, from a note to a paragraph, an emoticon or a heart.

Creating a new layout

If you don't like the way punctuation marks are placed on your keyboard, and you constantly wonder where the comma is and where the dash is on different layouts before putting the desired character, then change the layout to suit you using the free Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator program. This will solve the problem with punctuation marks moving across the keyboard. You've probably encountered this situation: in English text you need to insert a comma according to its meaning, but in the Latin layout, when you press a button, a slash is inserted.

Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator helps eliminate this inconvenience by allowing you to customize your layout. Other users will have to explain how to put punctuation marks, but you won’t have to worry about typing.

Launch the program. To avoid creating a keyboard layout with all the letters and punctuation marks from scratch, expand the "File" menu and click "Load Existing Keyboard."
For example, let's edit the Latin keyboard layout. Highlight "USA" and click "OK."
Give the project a name. Expand the "Project" menu and select "Properties".
In the “Name” line, specify the name of the project - it will be used as the name of the folder with the configuration files. In the “Description” field, enter a name for the layout. Make it unique so it will appear in the list of Windows keyboards. If you simply write “English”, you will not be able to understand where the normal layout is and where the individual layout is.
Return to the main program window. Look in the line “Current working directory” where the folder with the configuration files will be saved. You can change the location of the directory by clicking on the dotted button and pointing through Explorer to a different location on the disk.

To assign a new value to a key, left-click on it and in the window that appears, enter a different character or its code. Then you need to check the box next to the “Shift” item and edit the so-called upper values of the buttons on the keyboard. For example, you can split the dash and underscore into different buttons, or split the number “1” and exclamation point into separate keys.

If you click the “All” button in the character input window, an additional menu will appear in which you can assign key values for combinations with Alt or Alt+Shift.

It is not recommended to touch the letters to avoid confusion. Place a period, comma, colon in the English layout in the same place where they are on the keyboard in the Russian layout. Don’t forget to bring the Russian layout into line so that there are no errors or overlapping characters.

If you need additional characters that aren't natively on your keyboard, you can easily add them too using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. For example, let’s add a ruble sign to a button with a dash and underscore.

Open the Unicode character table. Find the ruble sign. Copy the character itself or its Unicode number.
Return to the main program window. Click the dash button, then click All.
Insert the ruble sign into the line “ctrl+alt+key”. Save the new dash configuration by clicking OK.

To add a layout, you need to create an installation package with a setup.exe file that will launch the installer. Expand the "Project" menu and click "Build DLL and Setup Package". The installer will offer to create an operation log (click “No”) and open the folder with the file for installation in Explorer (click “Yes”).