You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How do I know which keyboard stroke will give me which symbol from the repertoire of a font?

I am looking at the Symbols font in Font Book, I look at view/repertoire and see lots of symbols, but no clue how to type them. can anyone help?

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on May 21, 2016 5:42 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 21, 2016 5:46 AM

What symbols are you wanting to insert into your text? If they're accented letters, all you need to do is hold down that key and a menu will pop up. Press the number that corresponds to the accented letter you need. If they're other symbols or emojis in general, press Control + Command + Space to bring up the Character Viewer.


User uploaded file

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 21, 2016 5:46 AM in response to appleby

What symbols are you wanting to insert into your text? If they're accented letters, all you need to do is hold down that key and a menu will pop up. Press the number that corresponds to the accented letter you need. If they're other symbols or emojis in general, press Control + Command + Space to bring up the Character Viewer.


User uploaded file

May 23, 2016 8:32 AM in response to pinkstones

Holding down the key to get an accented letter is great, I didn't know about that. I was trying to type degrees F and degrees C, using the little circle for degrees. I see it in font book, and I had to copy and paste the character. I wanted to know what keystroke to use, maybe copy and paste is all there is. I finally found this, which helped OS X El Capitan: Use the Character Viewer

It says "Open the Character Viewer: In a document, choose Edit > Emoji & Symbols, or press Control-Command-Space."

Neither worked for me (using Microsoft Word, an old version, maybe that's why). Should it work in Word? Nor did it work in Mail.

However, this really did help: "To open Keyboard preferences, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Keyboard." Then you see a check box for "Show keyboard, emoji, & symbol viewers in menu bar". Voila!


May 23, 2016 8:33 AM in response to appleby

appleby wrote:


Holding down the key to get an accented letter is great, I didn't know about that. i was trying to type degrees F and degrees C, using the little circle for degrees. I see it in font book, and I had to copy and paste the character. I wanted to know what keystroke to use, maybe copy and paste is all there is. There used to be a thing called character viewer for the keyboard, I don't see it in El Capitane.


I showed you the character viewer in my response, and I told you the keyboard command to bring it up (Control + Command + Space). However, to make the degree symbol, press Shift + Option + 8.

How do I know which keyboard stroke will give me which symbol from the repertoire of a font?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.