Easily Type special characters on a Windows PC

 

USE THE TOUCH KEYBOARD

The easiest way to add diacritical marks to a document is to enable the Windows touch keyboard. The touch keyboard automatically appears if you’re using a Windows tablet or if you’re using a PC in tablet mode. If you don’t have a touchscreen, you can use the keyboard icon that appears in the taskbar, on the right side near the date. Don’t see it? This is how you get it:

• Right-click on the taskbar
• Click on “Show touch keyboard button”

Click on “Show touch keyboard button.”

Now, when you want to use a special character:

• Click on the touch keyboard icon
• The touch keyboard will appear. Long press (with your mouse button or, if you have a touchscreen, your finger) on the letter you want to use
• You’ll now see several extra keys showing the ways you can type that letter with different symbols. Select the one you want, and it will appear on your document.
• If you want to enter an emoji, click on the emoji key (on the left of the “space bar”)

Select the special character you want, and it will appear on your document.

USE THE EMOJI KEYBOARD

Another keyboard that you can access and can let you easily add special characters to your text is Windows’ emoji keyboard. Yes, it is mainly for adding emojis to your text, but it’s got other uses as well. And it’s simple to use:

• Hold down the Windows key (the one with the Windows symbol on it) and hit the period key
• The emoji keyboard will pop up, showing a variety of emojis. Click on the symbols tab on top (the third from the left).

The emoji keyboard also lets you access special characters.

• Use the menu on the bottom line to select the type of symbol you’re looking for (if you’re looking for characters to use within text, you’ll probably want to select this one: Ç). Then scroll down until you find the character you want.

USE THE CHARACTER MAP

If you’d like to try a more old-fashioned method of adding special characters to Windows, you can use the character map, which is a less polished and more complicated version of the touch keyboard but offers a similar service.

To access it on your Windows 10 system:

• Type “character” in your search field and then select the Character Map app
• You’ll get a pop-up map showing a bunch of special characters for a specific font. You can change the font by clicking on the drop-down font menu at the top.

The character map lets you access a wide variety of special characters.

• Click on the letter(s) or special characters that you want to use in your document and then click on the “Select” button. They’ll appear in the “Characters to copy” field.
• Once you’ve selected all the characters you want, click on the “Copy” button and then paste the character(s) into your document