Just a quickie

I’ve got to admit, I’ve just had Dr Paul — he of Dr Paul’s Quiz — ask me how I got a certain character to appear on Facebook. The ‘æ’ sign, to be precise.

I had to be honest, and tell him that it’s done by hitting Alt and ‘'’; not something that’d be available to him, under Windoze.

I also know I’ve a wide range of these available to me; certainly from Mac OS X 10.4.x, and right up to now, as I’m using Mac OS X 10.5.7. And I don’t see Apple not using them in Snow Leopard, which see’s its release in September of this year.

So, to follow on from the keyboard Shortcuts guide I did in April, here’s some helpful keyboard shortcuts for non-standard characters in Leopard …

SYMBOLS	KEYS	DESCRIPTION
“	Option [	Opening quotation mark
”	Option shift [	Closing mark
‘	Option ]	Opening apostrophe
’	Option shift ]	Closing apostrophe
–	Option Hyphen	En dash
—	Option shift hyphen	Em dash
…	Option ;	Ellipsis
ª	Option 9
·	Option Shift 9	Decimal Point.
º	Option 0	Degrees. (Temperarure)
•	Option 8	Bullet mark
°	Option Shift 8	Another Bullet mark
¶	Option 7	Paragraph mark
‡	Option Shift 7	Footnote
§	Option 6	Another footnote
fl	Option Shift 6	Ligature of f & l
∞	Option 5	Infinity
fi	Option Shift 5	Ligature of f & i
¢	Option 4	2⁄4 time signature
#	Option 3	Hash Mark. The Americans call it a Pound sign.
»	Option Shift \	French closing quotation mark
›	Option Shift 4	French closing apostrophe
‹	Option Shift 3	French opening apostrophe
«	Option \	French opening quotation mark
€	Option 2	Euro currency sign. Cue Al Murrey
™	Option Shift 2	Trademark
©	Option g	Copyright sign
®	Option r	Registered sign
¡	Option 1	Spanish punctuation
¿	Option Shift /	More Spanish Punctuation
⁄	Option Shift 1	Division sign.
÷	Option /	Division sign.
ç	Option c
ç	Option shift c
Π	Option p	Lower case Pi
Π	Option shift p	Upper case Pi
Ω	Option z	Omega
æ	Option '
æ	Option shift '
≠	Option =	Does Not Equal
≈	Option x	Approximately equal to

I’d also like to thank David Pogue, of The Missing Manuel fame; I’d’ve never known about these, if it wasn’t for his very helpful indexes …

Hope those are helpful!!