Table of Codes to Create Special Characters - Special Character Keyboard Table and Explanations - NetLingo The Internet Dictionary: Online Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms, Acronyms, Text Messaging, Smileys ;-)

Table of Codes to Create Special Characters

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To enter a special character, hold down [ALT] key and type 0xxx, where xxx represents digits from the table. Have fun!

More explantation and notes are beneath the table, jump to it here.


Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code
 160  ¡161  ¢162  £163  ¤164  ¥165  ¦166  §167
¨168  ©169  ª170  «171  ¬172  ­173  ®174  ¯175
°176  ±177  ²178  ³179  ´180  µ181  182  ·183
¸184  ¹185  º186  »187  ¼188  ½189  ¾190  +191
À192  -193  Â194  Ã195  Ä196  Å197  Æ198  Ç199
È200  É201  Ê202  Ë203  Ì204  Í205  Î206  Ï207
Ð208  Ñ209  Ò210  Ó211  Ô212  Õ213  Ö214  ×215
Ø216  Ù217  Ú218  Û219  Ü220  Ý221  Þ222  ß223
à224  á225  â226  ã227  ä228  å229  æ230  ç231
è232  é233  ê234  ë235  ì236  í237  î238  ï239
ð240  ñ241  ò242  ó243  ô244  õ245  ö246  ÷247
ø248  ù249  ú250  û251  ü252  ý253  þ254  ÿ255


CharDecimal
Unicode
ISO8859  CharDecimal
Unicode
ISO8859  CharDecimal
Unicode
ISO8859
8364128  $3636  ©169169

What are special characters?

The phrase "special characters" refers to the variety of characters that can be typed into a computer and displayed on a screen, just like letters and numbers, but are not viewable on the keyboard. Special characters are primarily used to type foreign characters (and Egyptian Hieroglyphs!), for example, they allow you to send an e-mail that includes foreign characters. Most up to date e-mail programs allow you to do this, but you have to know the correct codes to use. They are also seen online in smileys :-§

To enter a special character, hold down [ALT] key and type 0xxx, where xxx represents digits from the above tables. (This will also let you use special characters in Word documents, without the hassle of setting up special code pages and keyboards.)

UNICODE Characters

***The rest of this explanation is more technical and has to do with the below table***

If you are writing an HTML or XML document, you have a much greater choice if you use UNICODE character code. In fact it is preferable to use UNICODE rather than ISO-8859 code. The correct characters will be recognized by all Browsers that adhere to International standards. You have a choice of using decimal code or hexadecimal code.

To enter a character in decimal UNICODE , type: &#xxx; (where xxx represent digits from the following table.)

For example, on the following line you should see the symbols for Euro, British Pound and US Dollar, each repeated twice, first with Unicode, then with ISO 8859-1. €   € ,  £   £ ,  $   $ .   If any one of them does not show correctly, adjust the Character setting in your browser. (Past insights include Netscape4, go to: View/Character Set; In Netscape6 or 7 go to View/Character Coding (you may have to click "More" to see an additional menu with more choices); In MS Internet Explorer 5 go to View/Encoding. Mac/Netscape users : choose "open in browser" from File menu.)

Table of UNICODE codes

For Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Scandinavian and some other Central European Languages. The hexadecimal digits hhh used in the &#Xhhh; code.

Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code   Char Code
Ā100  Đ110  Ę118  Ķ136  Ń143  Ód3  Ś15a  Ű170
ā101  đ111  ę119  ķ137  ń144  óf3  ś15b  ű171
Ă102  Ď10e  Ě11a  Ĺ139;  Ņ145  Œ152  Š160  Ų172
ă103  ď10f  ě11b  ĺ13a  ņ146  œ153  š161  ų173
Ą104  Ē112      Ļ13b  Ň147  ŕ155  Ţ162  Ÿ178
ą105  ē113  Ģ122  ļ13c  ň148  Ŗ156  ţ163  Ź179
Ć106  ĕ115  ģ123  Ľ13d  Ō14c  ŗ157      ź17a
ć107  Ė116  Ī12a  ľ13e  ō14d  Ř158  ť165  Ż17b
Č10c  ė117  ī12b      Ő150  ř159      ż17c
č10d      Į12e  Ł141  ő151  Ş15e      Ž17d
        į12f  ł142      ş15f      ž17e

NOTE: The character signs have been placed using Windows ([ALT]0xxxx) ISO 8859-1 coding. Therefore they will not show up correctly, if browser is not set for Western ISO 8859-1 character set. If you set browser for any other character set, in the Character column you will see the equivalent characters for the selected set. For example: If you select "Central European ISO-8859-2", you will see Czech, Hungarian and Polish characters, However, if you select "Central European Windows", you will still see Czech, Hungarian and Polish characters, but some of them are in different positions on the chart, because Microsoft does not strictly follow international standards! If you select "Cyrillic ISO-8859-5", you will see Russian characters. If you select "Unicode (UTF-8)" you will only see rectangles, because Unicode expects to see the "&#xxx;" coding, not the "[ALT]0xxx" used in preparing this chart. Your screen driver may not allow you to see all characters correctly, for some sets. Likewise, your printer may not be able to print all sets.

English and North American browsers automatically select ISO-8859-1. Central European browsers automatically select ISO-8859-2. However, if the characters are written in Unicode, then all modern browsers will read the characters correctly, because every character in every language has been assigned a unique code. That is why it is desirable to use Unicode when preparing HTML or XML documents.


Computer Glossary Links

  • How to Enter Spanish Special Characters
  • Go to Czyborra.com for a discussion of character sets
  • UNICODE charts are here



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