G'day Cat

I had to thinks about yer question and found meself with possibly far more infoblah than you require, I hope you don't mind if'n I divide it into two questions (Word & html) and then piggyback some other stuff here, I don't wanna 'teach grandma how to suck eggs' neither - but I got my own point to make and an agenda as well, both of which I'll come to d'rekly...

Do you want to know how to get these special characters onto something you are typing in Word, say - or are you wanting the html codes to use so that they will display correctly in a browser say, a Mudcat thread, thus: bodhrán. Two different animals, and I'll give yez the drum on how to do both.

Google found lotsa info on both Word and html special characters - but what I really think you were after in this instance is info on how to generate them on a key-board while typing in Word. In Windows/Microsoft it seems that they mostly (?all) are initiated by the Alt key, followed by four characters. If'n you are on a PC - you will also be able to access these Special Character Keystrokes from the accessory Character Map (Click START - then PROGRAMS - then ACCESSORIES - should be there somewhere.)

Go to START, click on FIND and type CHARMAP if'n it ain't where it should be and you get desperate...

Anyways, find your Character Map wherever it happens to be hidden on your particular machine and fire it up - it may help to know which font you are using in your Word Processor, then selecting and matching the font you are going to use from the fontlist in Character Map. This way you will can find the appropriately fontmatched special character.

By way of example: If you are typing in Timesblah in your word processor - it might be that ye'll get best results from the keyboard shortcut codes from the matching font - in this case Timesblah - get 'em on display on the Character Map. Click the desired special character from the table of all sortsa groovy characters, including the now almost legendary lower-case-a-with-an-acute-accent; and the Alt+blah codes desired will be displayed in the Character Map status bar - you can key 'em in at Word now that you know 'em, or cut and paste direct from Character Map to Word. You might wanna make a note of yer favourite Alt+blah codes till you memorize 'em, or just to keep handy, like.

You can also insert on your Word page the lower-case-a-with-an-acute-accent and all its' funky special character cousins by pulling down the 'Insert' menu - and looking for 'Symbol' - your mileage may vary.

Alt+0225 is the Word processor keyboard shortcut code for the fairly handy lower-case-a-with-accent-acute - á and

&-#-2-2-5 (without the hyphens) is the html code to display the extremely useful lower-case-a-with-accent-acute - in a browser - á.
For the first time I've just noticed that these numbers match -225- any officially smart person wanna comment on this phenomenon? But I digress...

As a shameless-player-of-the-bodhrán-in-public, can you see where I'm going with this fellow travellers?

Special Characters in Word Processing
Accents, Diacriticals and Special Language Characters for Foreign Languages

Special Characters on the web
Table of html codes

So, now you know. The next time one of you misses the lower-case-a-with-an-acute-accent in the name of that round drum thingy that I play, either in print or on the web - my Auntie will come 'around to your house, and she'll rip yer bloody arms orf, and she will, too...

cheers

aussiebloke