Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?

Subject: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,Terry K
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 02:33 PM

I just had a series of computer disasters which ended with me formatting my C drive (hence no cookie). I reinstalled Windows (ME) ticking all the "English-British" options but find that my keyboard has reloaded with "English-US" which means that the @ comes out as " and the pound comes out as #. I have tried to change it but it will not accept British English any more (it was OK before the reload).

I will get a solution in time, but so I can keep working until then, can someone tell me how to type the pound sign?

I just think Mudcat will be quicker than trying anywhere else.

cheers, Terry

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 02:45 PM

You mean the monetary unit pound? I don't remember ever seeing a keyboard that has that symbol in the US. Here in the us we call the #, the pound sign, but it relates "pound" as in unit of weight.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 02:45 PM

Hold down the ALT key while typing 0163 using the numeric keypad on the right side of the keyboard. Failing that, in Word at least, open the Insert Menu, select "symbol", leave the "font" setting at (normal text), find the Sterling sign (fourth row center on my display), select it and click "insert".

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 02:47 PM

...you could copy/past it from somewhere.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 02:49 PM

Crosposed with ClaireBear who I'm sure has a better solution than mine.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GLoux
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 03:17 PM

Or use Windows Character Map program in the Programs->Accessories->System Tools folder to select and copy the character.

-Greg

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 04:38 PM

well, they all give me lots of things to try - thanks all!

cheers, Terry

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: s&r
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 04:42 PM

Control panel - regional and language options.

Stu

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 05:36 PM

Just use html codes: £
& plus# plus163 plus;

There is more than one thread giving all of these, inc. © ® ¥ (yen) µ (micron) etc. etc. All employ &# plus a number plus semicolon, no spaces. And Euro, ത, has number 8364

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 05:38 PM

Someone gave me the wrong number for Euro, not on my old table of codes. Sorry.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: treewind
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 05:49 PM

In HTML you can do it as € which comes out as €

Anahata

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: artbrooks
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 06:02 PM

€ is ALT 128 (number pad)

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: open mike
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 06:04 PM

£--did this by holding down "alt" key and typing 0163 then let up key...
£ --- you can cut and paste from here too.
sort of looks liike an upside down 3 with a line thru it..
but hope you find something that works.
Did you go to control panel, region and language options?
or windows, fonts may have other choices.
Or you could go to:
Start, All programs, Accessories, system tools, Character map
in Typographic Symbols, WST English you can find this one:
but when i copy and paste a symbol which on my screen looks like
a pound sterling symbol, i get this tic-tac-toe # pound sign...

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Amos
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 06:04 PM

&__euro___; &___pound___; with the underscores removed will produce € £

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 06:15 PM

My keyboard has dollars as well as pounds, but not euros. Read what you will into that. A Blairist keyboard, I ask you...

Simplest thing to do, Terry, though it's not elegant is just put GBP after the number.

"€ is ALT 128 (number pad)" Not on my keyboard it ain't. My Alt128 comes up with Ç not € (I got that by pasting it in from a post). Any suggestions for a code that might do the trick? I'd rather like to be able to do Euros.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: artbrooks
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 06:25 PM

Must be because I'm using a US-coded keyboard. I got that code from Microsoft Word/symbols/ASCII decimal. Maybe a UK-coded word processor will elicit the correct code set?

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: artbrooks
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 06:27 PM

Oops...I goofed...try ALT 0128

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,Terry K
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 07:00 PM

Looks like this may be harder than we thought.

HTML is not much use as I need the symbol for letters written in MS Word - simple word processing. The alt0128 may work except that its a laptop so doesn't have a number pad.

I did try the regional and language options - first- but it would not let me load the English-British language option.

I found a symbol set in Word, but because I have the English-British option in everything except the keypad, it doesn't include the pound sign (because the symbol is supposed to be available direct from the keypad!).

Looks like I'm going to have to copy and paste (roll of drums).....£

cheers, Terry

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 07:15 PM

McGraw - et. al.

Using the Alt-NumPad method, here's also the "hitch" that "NumLock" must be turned on. If it's not, you may get "something" but it's unpredictable. If you put a "0" (zero) at the beginning as in Alt-0163 you get the character that maps to "163" on the "default keyboard mapping" for your Windows installation. If you omit the zero, Alt-163, you get the character from the "in use keyboard mapping." (usually - or maybe it's the other way around). For most users, the "in use" is the "default" so it doesn't make much difference, but your setup may give different characters with and without the leading zero.

Worrying about "keyboard maps" isn't usually fruitful for normal users, so try both ways, and "If it works, use it. If it doesn't, do something else."

The "leading &" is an html thing, and won't help you much for "on the machine" work. The "leading &" tells the html rendering program that what follows is a character, and the ";" tells it it's come to the end of the character. For on-machine stuff, holding the Alt key down tells the OS that "anything that comes from the NumPad is an ASCII number" until you release the Alt key.

The "real" ANSI character number for the "euro" is outside the range that the Alt-NumPad method can send simply, so on US systems, Microsoft arbitrarily mapped it to ASCII number 128 - which just happened to be an "empty/unused" number in old ASCII systems. I can't say whether Alt-0128 would work on "European" keyboards, but they use a different "keyboard map" that actually places the symbol on the keyboard.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 07:53 PM

Terry K -

Sure, your laptop has a NumPad. It's just "overlaid" on the other keys, and you have to "turn on" a NumPad switch everytime you use it, and turn it off when you want to type normally. p.i.a. but it's there.

If you found the Windows Character Map (Usually Start-Programs-Accessories-SystemTools) it should have all the characters you have installed, including the ones on the keyboard. The standard icon for this utility looks like a single keyboard key (they say). The "pound" symbol may not be in all the fonts, so look in the one you want to use. If this works, I'd suggest putting a short cut on desktop. You do have to click on the character, then click "select," then click "copy," then go to your other program and "paste." What pastes will probably be some strange size, so you may need to format the character size, italics, bolding, etc. Nuisance, but workable, and it should work in nearly any program.

In Word, if you use the Insert-Symbol, after you pick the character, before you hit Insert, you can click on the "Shortcut" button and put a keystroke combination in that will let you "type" the character whenever you need it at least in Word. It's recommended that you use an Alt-something, Ctl-something, etc to keep the shortcuts out of the way of your regular typing. It should warn you if you pick something that's already in use.

The shortcut key combinations that you create in the Insert Symbol panel are stored as "document properties," so you may have to reset them in each new document. If you can get them set in a template (.dot) then they should work in any document you open using that template. Word may ask if you want to save changes to the template when you exit, and it may save the shortcuts to the .dot you use if you say yes - but no guarantees with this. (I rather dislike "Insert-Symbol" for other reasons, so don't use it much.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 08:21 PM

€ - by George, you've got it.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 08:24 PM

c

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 08:25 PM

c

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 09:17 PM

I don't quite c...

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,Paranoid Android
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 09:59 PM

I use an Epiphone guitar and my "fans" think the Epiphone logo is a Euro sign. So, if you want a Euro sign and none of the above works for you just go to the Epiphone web site and drag their logo onto your document. (Now there's another urban tale).

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 10:13 PM

G'day all,

The Alt (0)XXX codes are by far the fastest way to get a whole range of odd characters ... as long as you know the codes and the (fairly minor) rules.

I have a 'Reference Card' for a basic font (Times New Roman) - showung all 128 characters in the AASCI 'second set' - hanging by both my work and my home computer. This was printed out from a small font viewing app called FontSee (normally used to scroll through fonts, printed out in their characters, looking for the one you want to use ... getting old-fashioned, now that good publishing programs show the font names in their appropriate characters).

Lots of useful codes in there.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 12:37 AM

Some of the html (and html practice) threads have discussed the "coding by character number" business in lengthy detail. Some caution is advised with some of them, particularly with older ones, but the full "ANSI character set" defines "a whole bunch" of characters - far more than can be coded (easily) with Alt-0xxx. That system, in "off the shelf" systems can only handle the 128 ASCII characters, or - if you load ANSI.sys - the 256 characters of the "extended ASCII set(s). The difficulty there is that there are several "extended ASCII sets. IBM tried to enforce one that still survives in a few places, and a more "universal" extended set is probably pretty much a Microsoft product.

People do frequently refer to "extended ASCII" as "ANSI" but it's really just a (broken) fragment of ANSI.

All of this has been somewhat superceded by availability of font sets, and tools to use them, for the full range of ANSI characters. With enough add-ons, one can theoretically enter all(*?) the Chinese and other "oriental" languages, Hebrew and others, with top-to-bottom and/or right-to-left line parsing, etc. An Alt-Uxxxxx coding exists, but is unlikely to work with installed programs and on the machines that many of us have.

* Some languages include large numbers of "composite characters" that require superimposing several "primitive glyph forms" to form the actual character(s) of the language, but in principle this can be handled by the new systems.

The characters themselves can be viewed at the ANSI web sites. An early "definitive volume" on the whole subject of using them (and other aspects of talking between languages and cultures) was Developing International Software: For Windows 95 and Windows NT, Nadine Kano, ©1995 by Microsoft Press, but with an earlier ©1968 in the authors name. Unfortunately, neither Win95 nor WinNT was really adapted to using the full ANSI character set, among other things because the "native word length" didn't have enough bits to represent a character in "one binary word."

With these "primitive" systems, software was "localized" to provide the ability to use the local language, but no tools were generally available to make an English (US or WestEu) talk to a Chinese one.

WinXP and probably Win2K(?) are the first Microsoft OSs with theoretical full ANSI capability, but even there it's extremely rare to find a machine set up to use "exotic mixes" of languages. The unconfirmed impression is that software intended for Chinese use has some limited "English" capability, but equipping an English system to speak Chinese appears to be available only to users of the "WinXP Server" versions. I've been unable to find whether "Win2K Server" versions can be suitably equipped.

The update to the above book, Developing International Software 2, by "Dr. Software," ©2003, Microsoft Press, gives some good info, but is still rather vague about what really is needed to write "all the languages." It's even more vague about what's available. At the time of it's release, Microsoft's print shops and other production people did not have the capability of handling "full set ANSI" characters, so all of the "foreign" characters were converted to "images" that were pasted into the text as separate objects, i.e. as "pictures" - not as "text characters."

There are setup and printing programs with full ANSI capability. TEX is one, if you get all the right plugins and fonts, but the few programs that can be upgraded now are pretty "learning intensive," so common workarounds are probably more suitable for most users. You find, or buy, a font that has the characters you want, and you cut and paste (Insert symbol or use CharMap) to get individual characters.

As long as you stick to "Western European" languages, and possibly Kanji written left to right, recent Windows versions can probably provide a font that will work for places where a few characters suffice. WinXP, probably Win2K, and possibly WinME can be equipped to read "right to left" if absolutely necessary, to handle Hebrew - sort of. Other similar languages tend to have large numbers of "composite characters" that are an additional challenge. "Pictograph" languages like Chinese are another step beyond. But we're promised "it will all be easy - - - someday."

The bottom line now is that if the "character" you want is on your machine, you can probably insert it wherever you want to, using one of the methods already given. If you're communicating digitally, and the person receiving your stuff has the character in a standard font set, you can "code" the ASCII/ANSI value of the character, and the recipient will see the character when they get the message. If neither of you has the character - then who cares?

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 06:10 AM

On the right of my space bar there is a key Alt Gr and if I hold it down and press 4 (not on the number pad) I get a euro sign. I'm in the UK

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 10:26 AM

It's taken me an age but I now have a pound sign by hitting Alt before the pound sign instead of Shift. I also have a pound sign on my Word toolbar which I can click on.

Jim, I would guess that the AltGr dollar sign has been assigned to euro on your keypad either by you or someone else?

This has all been very helpful but I continue to be amazed at how difficult Microsoft make everything.

cheers, Terry

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 01:37 PM

Terry, it's the euro sign, not the dollar sign, and it works on all fairly modern keyboards.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 02:45 PM

Terry -

Actually, Microsoft makes it easy to do most things. They just don't make it easy to find the easy ways to do them. The easy ways are "obvious" to the wonks who set them up, but the rest of us have to search them out - because the documentation all has to get through Marketing and Sales before it escapes to the using community.

A sort of case in point is Jim McLeans "works on all fairly modern keyboards." It doesn't work on my very modern keyboard. It only works on fairly modern keyboards regionalized for the European market. With "simple" keyboards, most of the "regionalizing" is done in Windows software, but with "fancy" ones like my "Microsoft Business Keyboard" some of it is hard wired. There is no place where you can easily look up what "regionalization" means. And no place at all where you can find out if a given system is subject to such "features" before you buy it.

If you buy it in a "regionalized" market, it's tailored to the market to "make it easier for the user." It's easier to use if you "fit" the market region setup, but very difficult to get (or even identify) an "out of market" version if you don't.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 06:34 PM

John, I did say I was in the uk.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 07:20 PM

€ - yes, the Alt Gr + 4 worked. Quicker than the Alt + 0128.

Anyone know the trick for a grave accent and a cedilla, so in French I can write "mere" and "pere" and "ca va", and have them look right?

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 08:09 PM

In Word, and some other "compliant" programs, Ctl+', Ctl+:, Ctl+!, Ctl+^, etc will "append" various diacriticals to the next letter typed. (Don't type the "+".) There's no true "oganek" but quite a lot of "marked" characters should work - again depending on your "regionalization." It's an "autoreplace" function, so you actually get the "real" variant character inserted.

If you look in Word Help, and search on Keyboard shortcuts, you should find a link to tabulated "quick keys" that list the Ctl, Alt, Ctl+Shft, etc default combinations - in Word2000 & later. Similar tables are in Help for earlier versions, but harder to find - and I don't remember how I used to get there. Many of these will work in programs where you wouldn't expect them to, and won't work where you'd think they should; but in Word they're useful.

The Alt - NumPad method works for the characters in the "low ASCII/ANSI ranges, and for html you can use the &nnnn; thing. And of course the Character Map also works to paste individual characters, if you choose a font that includes the characters you want.

A couple of fonts, called "International Fonts" I believe, are available but not always loaded by default. They're a lot larger than the old "short table" fonts, but if you use alliteratives a lot you might want to see if you have them, or get them from Mickey's library.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 08:21 PM

G'day McGrath,

On my Alt 0 xxx table:

alt 0 231 = ç
alt 0 232 = è
alt 0 233 = é

Other tricky shortcuts are available for the commonly needed extra characters ... but the Alt 0 xxx codes give me 123 characters in the "second ASCII set" ... and that is fine for most things short of typesetting in Vietnamese - where the Vietnamese second set (only working with specific 'Vietmanese' fonts) has 126 extra (multiple accent!) vowels ... and a single consonant (Ð ... in upper and lower case).

(I'm not putting up my hand next time the International division walks past with a Vietnamese / English presntation and a blank expression ... !)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 08:23 PM

One resource probably not well known is at:

Microsoft Global Develepment

where you'll find links to things like:

Welsh Language Support and Extending the United Kingdom Keyboard Layout

and:

New international features released with Windows XP Service Pack 2:.

Scroll down to August 9, 2004 for the last one.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 11:22 AM

£ The only way I could figure out how to do it was by copying and pasting.

I'm still trying to hold onto the bugger now that it's on my clipboard!

I KNEW I shouldn't have read this thread!!!

..xx..££££..e

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 01:30 PM

This has been most enlightening. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 02:05 PM

There is another option if you use Microsoft Word, and allow it to "autocorrect" as you type. If you open "Tools – Autocorrect Options" and click the "Autocorrect" Tab, you should see a couple of boxes where you can enter a "misspelling" on the left, and the "correct spelling" on the right. If you put some unlikely "code" in the left, and paste the character you want on the right, whenever you type the "code" Word will replace it with the "character." Put something like E# on the left and ₤ on the right and whenever you type E# it will be "corrected" to ₤ - in Word.

The description here is from my Word 2002, but this method works at least since Word95, although the "clicks" may vary a bit.

"Legal typists" should always enter "trail" on the left and "trial" on the right. Then if you have "spell check as you type" turned on, when it corrects your typo to "trail" autocorrect will change it back to "trial" and people won't call your boss a "cowboy lawyer" (always going to trail). Odd capitalizations can also be handled here. In the default setup, it's almost impossible to type "BAe" without it being "corrected" to Bae, so you put the unwanted correction, "Bae" in the left box and what you want, "BAe" in the right. You type BAe, but spell/grammar check changes it to Bae, and autoreplace puts it back to BAe.

Many people turn off the "correct as you type" function, but it's probably helpful once you're aware of how it works. If it makes an unwanted substitution, hitting Ctl-Z immediately will cancel the change and put it back like what you typed. In recent versions of Word, if you cancel something the first time it tries to change it, it may "learn" that you don't want that replacement, and won't do it again for the remainder of that document. Older versions are "less smart."

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 06:32 PM

ú £££   ¬ Ç ¬
Well, I can get the pound (never did that!!!), but not the euro. This is fun, guys.    Tw

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 07:28 PM

Tannywheeler -

If you're on a "US" machine, the easiest "euro" is to hold down the Alt key while you enter 0128 on the Number Pad. To post here, you should be able to enter € to get €.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 07:43 PM

French accents...go to http://french.about.com/library/bl-accents.htm....All there!(don't forger to ust the numeric keypad, Number lock on)
A bientôt Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,Toby
Date: 02 May 07 - 06:27 PM

Good grief how complicate it all has been made...

For fun symboles like the € press ctrl+alt+4, this probably only works if: A) the font you are using supports it, and B) your software at the time supports it.

For changing your keyboard settings, as previously mentioned

Start>>Control Panel>>Regional and Language Settings, then find the keyboard tab and set it to english-uk, alternativly, if you are using windows XP you may see a little "en" icon on the far left bottom of your screen, to the left of the date and other icons, left click that and it should provide options for changing your language settings.

:)

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Sorcha
Date: 02 May 07 - 06:28 PM

Well, for weights or numbers I use #. For Pound Sterling, it's Alt+156 on the number pad. Like this. £

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 May 07 - 06:29 PM

Hahahaha,
better late than never, just noticed the dates on this thing...
GUEST,Dave              18 Nov 04 - 07:43 PM
GUEST,Toby         02 May 07 - 06:27 PM

Tum di dum

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: GUEST,JimP
Date: 02 May 07 - 07:06 PM

For a comprehensive list of "funny" characters available:

http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Rowan
Date: 02 May 07 - 07:06 PM

And, without wishing to belittle the super advice above, I always used "lb" to signify pounds before we went metric. I've forgotten how I did the monetary thing on CP/M and have used a Mac ever since. One day I'll learn Windoze though.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: open mike
Date: 02 May 07 - 07:48 PM

now i wonder how to type "cents" sign..the c with the | thru it?
besides typing $ .02

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 May 07 - 08:16 PM

On my US WinXP setup, the character map (for Times New Roman) shows the "cent" sign as having ANSI numeric value 162, so you should be able to use Alt with the NumPad: Alt+0162 (¢) should "type" it in most Windows programs as I just did inside the "()."

You should also be able to type it into a "Reply to Thread" box as ¢ and get ¢.

Note that the cent (0162) is right next to the pound (0163) = ¢ and £.

Either of those two should work on any "Western European" regionalized computer.

What you see on your browser depends on your machine setup and your browser, so when you use funny characters that work just dandy on your machine you have no guarantee that everyone who reads your post will see the same thing you do.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: open mike
Date: 02 May 07 - 08:56 PM

¢ the one i see here has the line extending above and below the "c" but not all the way thru it...it does not look like yours ¢ but that works! thanks...

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 May 07 - 10:08 PM

My default font is (usually) Times New Roman, which uses a sloping line all the way through the "c". Some others use a complete vertical line (e.g. Tahoma), and some fonts use the broken line like you describe. For some (mostly old) faces, the line only extends above or below the outline of the c. It just depends on what mood the typographer was in when the typeface was named.

Unless there's a style sheet or coding that specifically calls for a particular typeface (font), in html you'll see most stuff in whatever default face you've told the browser to use.

For WinXP and Office programs of comparable era, it's possible to set up to have the fonts available in Office programs display "in font" so you can see at least the name of the one you select typed in the selection box roughly as it should appear in print.

You can also use the CharMap (see up above) to view how the characters will look in a different face.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Sorcha
Date: 02 May 07 - 10:31 PM

Guest, I don't recall anybody asking you. Log in or log off.

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: fumblefingers
Date: 02 May 07 - 10:46 PM

[ALT]0163 = £
[ALT]0128 = €

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: kendall
Date: 03 May 07 - 08:20 AM

Sorcha's suggestion works for me. I can now order my new Jaguar in English. Let's see, they run about, 60,000£. Or is it, £60,000?

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: Bill D
Date: 03 May 07 - 10:23 AM

A program for Windows which allows you to type weird characters with easy to remember keyboard combinations

AllChars

for example, for ¢, I just hit the ctrl. key to tell the program I want the next 2 characters to be combined, then c & / = ¢

Subject: RE: Tech: How do Americans type a pound sign?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 May 07 - 01:23 PM

A program?

That's a built-in feature in Microsoft Office, and works in most Office programs (but not in IE).

If you hold down Ctl while you hit the first character, the second character overprints to make a "composite." It's not a general "overstrike" thing, since lots of Ctl-x key combinations are shortcuts that will "do something" instead of setting up the combination character. Ctl-c, as an example would "copy" something, but Ctl-/ c gets ¢.

In Word, the sequence Ctl-F9 eq \o(a,b,c) F9 Ctl-Shift-F9 will print a, b, and c all in the same character space, and is a general "any overstrike" capability. Ctl-F9 inserts a "Field," the eq specifies an "equation field," \o makes it an overstrike, any number of characters, separated by commas, can be entered in the parenthesese, F9 "evaluates" the field and Ctl-Shift-F9 unlinks it to make it a "printed" object. (Note that if more than a couple of characters are overprinted, usually one of them is about all that will show legibly.)

In recent Word versions, you can also type a Unicode HEX character number and then hit Alt-X and it will be converted to the character. This is less useful than it might be though, since the character has to be present as a glyph in the font you have set when you do it. The "characters" you get this way usually are like what you get with Office's "Insert Symbol" and if you change the font after the character is inserted it often changes to garbage (and can't be changed back). Windows default installations only include a couple of fonts with reasonably complete "European language" extended Unicode character glyphs (and I don't recall which ones they are at the moment). Several fonts have a few "random extra characters" that may work, but there's little consistency between common fonts.

John