Mac OS X 10.5 Help
Typing special characters and symbols
You can use the Character Palette to insert special characters, such as mathematical symbols, letters with accent marks, or arrows and other “dingbats,” into your documents.
You can also use the Character Palette to enter Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean characters, as well as characters from other languages.
The Character Palette is in the Input menu (international symbol) in the top-right corner of your menu bar. If you don’t see the Input menu in the menu bar, open System Preferences and click International. Click Input Menu, then click the checkboxes next to Character Palette and “Show Input menu in menu bar.”
If an application is specifically designed to work with Mac OS X, you can choose Edit > Special Characters to open the Character Palette.
To use the Character Palette:
Open the application you want to enter special characters in, and place the insertion point where you want the special character or symbol to appear.
Choose Edit > Special Characters to open the Character Palette, or open the Input menu and choose Show Character Palette.
Choose the type of characters you want to see from the View pop-up menu at the top of the Character Palette window.
If you don’t see the View pop-up menu, click the button in the upper-right corner of the Character Palette to show the top portion of the window.
Click an item in the list on the left to see the characters that are available in each category.
Double-click the character or symbol in the right column that you want to insert into your document.
You can also select the character and click Insert. To see more options for each character, such as the variations in glyphs for some characters, click the Character Info triangle and then the Font Variation triangle at the bottom of the Character Palette window.
If the character doesn’t appear in your document, you may be using an application that doesn’t support that character. Try a different character or try to insert it in a different application.
You can also use the Keyboard Viewer to type special characters and symbols. For more information, click the links below.