Bee-dubya-ell -

Word has keyboard shortcuts for quite a number of "special characters." The problem with the shortcuts for general use is that you have to learn a separate shortcut for each character, and the shortcut methods differ somewhat for different wordprocessors. Using ASCII value entry is the "more general" method - the same for any ASCII symbol, provided that you know its character number, so it's the easier way to tell someone how to get a character, especially if you don't know what wp they are using.

To put "special characters" into your word processor, you should never need HTML. That's only needed if you're typing directly into something like the mudcat "Reply to Thread" box, or otherwise creating an "html document."

Regardless of what word processor you use, you can always use the Windows Character Map (assuming you use Windows). You will usually find it at Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools, with an icon that's supposed to look like a keyboard "key." You can copy any character that appears there and paste it into a word processor document (or anywhere else characters are useful).

Generally, if you can get the character "up" in your wordprocessor, you can copy and paste it into the "Reply to Thread" box on mudcat, and it will display ok - if the person who will read it has selected display in a font similar to what you use. You cannot, generally, paste characters from special-purpose fonts like Symbol or Dingbats for display on an html-based system - only those from "Western European" "text" fonts.

For general word processing for something you intend to print you can, of course, use any font displayed in the Character Map, since it will only display the fonts present on your machine, and you can print all of those. For a document that you might attach to an email, you have to be careful to use only the fonts the recipient is likely to have. For posting to html, you must, for all normal applications, use only a standard text font, like Times Roman, Arial, Helvetica, Palatino, Courier, etc.

Because of the ambiguity about what font readers of our sterling prose may have selected, when posting into an HTML based system like mudcat, it is generally preferable to code "special" characters using the HTML code names, or to code the "special" character using its ASCII (decimal or hex) value - unless you've confirmed that it comes across in legible form when you use some other method of input.

Only about 30 characters have html "namecodes," but any printable ASCII character can be "coded into" an html document using its ASCII number - decimal or hexadecimal. The methods are interchangeable, although where a "namecode" exists, its use is encouraged.

For Guest,Q also:

The three "html special characters" &, <, and > must always be coded to get them to display in an html document. If you inadvertently type one of them in a posting to mudcat it may (rarely) display, it may (occasionally) display as an "unidentified character" which usually is an empty box or a large dot - depending on the reader's font selection, or it may (frequently) "trash" your whole posting, or at least everything that follows the offending character.

You can type &amp; - the character namecode, or type &#038 - the code for ASCII decimal character number 38, or type &#X26; - the code for ASCII Hex character number X26, to display the character   &.

You can type &lt; - the character namecode, or type &#060; - the ASCII decimal character number, or type &#X3C; - the ASCII Hex character number to display the character   <.

You can type &gt; - the character namecode, or type &#62 - ASCII decimal character number, or type &#X3E - ASCII Hex character number to display the character   >.

There's quite a bit of useful information in the Mudcat PermaThread on HTML - or on a whole bunch of other easily accessible web sites. On the Mudcat main thread page, click on the arrow by the box at the top of the list of threads, select "Site Map and PermaThreads Index" and hit "GO." Happy exploring.

John