Special characters, without searching for them every time
Characters like the degree sign and the section mark are not on the keyboard. So every time one comes up, you end up searching "degree symbol" and copying it out of a search result.
It is not that there is no way to type them. Windows and Mac both have one. The trouble is that the routes are awkward to remember, so searching quietly becomes the fastest path. Below is a set you can copy straight from this page, and the keyboard routes as well.
The ones that come up most
Copy them from right here if you like.
| Where they're used | Characters |
|---|---|
| Text and documents | § ¶ † … · ° ′ ″ |
| Arrows | → ← ↑ ↓ ↔ ⇒ ▶ ▲ ▼ |
| Math | ± × ÷ ≠ ≤ ≥ ≈ √ ∞ |
| Currency | € £ ¥ ¢ ₩ |
| Marks and shapes | ○ ● □ ■ ☆ ★ ✓ ✔ |
| Circled numbers | ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ ⑥ ⑦ ⑧ ⑨ ⑩ |
On Windows, the panel behind Win + period
Press the Windows key and the period key together and a picker opens. It is mostly known as the emoji panel, but it has a symbols tab with arrows, math signs, and punctuation.
The older routes still exist. Character Map, a program that has shipped with Windows for decades, holds everything but makes you hunt through a grid. Alt codes work too, holding Alt and typing a number on the numeric keypad, Alt+0176 for the degree sign, but they only help for the two or three codes you happen to have memorized.
On the Mac, the Character Viewer
Press Ctrl + Cmd + Space and the Character Viewer opens. Arrows, punctuation, and math symbols are grouped, and there is a search box, which makes it the most usable of the built-in routes.
Accented letters are a separate, easier story on the Mac: hold down a letter key and the accent variants pop up above it.
Whichever route you take, one annoyance remains
Every keyboard method makes you leave what you were doing. Open the picker, hunt, choose, close, return. Once a day that is nothing. On a day you are writing a quote or a spec and the same three symbols keep coming up, the round trips add up.
Which is why people who use these often end up building their own collection: a note file with their symbols pasted in, or a page like this one in their bookmarks.
What this does not cover
- Emoji: they render differently on every device, which is a separate article
- Accented letters on Windows: they have their own input routes, and international keyboard
layouts handle them better than symbol pickers do
- Symbol menus inside specific programs: Word and its relatives have their own Insert menu for
this
There is a click-to-copy character board with more than the table above. The last eight characters you used stay pinned at the top, so on a day of repeated symbols the round trips disappear. Characters already on your keyboard are left out; it only collects the ones you'd otherwise go searching for.