| Today I want to talk about something that has been a basic function of Windows since…..well….. |
| It’s a very handy thing to know about and to use, but most people I know don’t even know that it exists! It makes typing much easier if you have to use symbols that you don’t see right on your keyboard. If you’ve never found yourself in a situation such as this, keep moving. Nothing to see here. However. If I’ve piqued your interest….. |
| (If you haven’t already figured out that I’m a major nerd, I feel like this left no doubt in your mind….am I right?) Let me introduce you to the Character Map. |
| As you can see, it shows you a plethora of characters and symbols. It shows you every available character within a font – and you can pick all different fonts! If you only need a symbol or character once, you can select a character and it will show up in the “Characters to copy” box. You then copy it and paste it into whatever you need. However, the real reason that I’m absolutely, devastatingly in love with the character map is what you can learn from it to make your life easier. It makes my heart go pitter pat. |
| Say you do a lot of work where you type up copyrighted material, and you constantly have to put in the copyright symbol. You could find the symbol and copy and paste it a million times. You could even go into the Character Map and select it and put it in a million times. Orrrrr…..you could pay attention to the lower right corner. |
| You see where it gives you a keystroke? That is actually the secret combination of keys to hit in order to put the symbol that you want into your text without ever having to cut, paste, or open the character map again! Let me tell you – this came so in handy during my many years of French class! I just memorized the right key strokes for my cedilla and accent marks, and then I could type like the wind! One does not type 110 WPM without learning the shortcuts on the keyboard. 35+ years of piano playing probably doesn’t hurt either, but I digress….. I hope this tip helps you shave minutes off your typing needs in the future! |