Have you ever been in the middle of writing something, then suddenly had the need to type a symbol like ™, € or º?

If you’re like me (or most other people), you will have cursed, gone to the menubar, opened up Insert => Symbol, then scrolled through until you found the right symbol.

BLOODY. TEDIOUS.

Now in my current WIP (Bifrost), I have need of the ° symbol ALL THE TIME. It started to become frustrating having to go to the menubar every time until I remembered a time at highschool, back when I was first learning how to actually USE computers* instead of just re-coding them so I could win** and I remembered the fun I used to have with the ASCII character codes***.

A quick Google and I had a number of reference guides in how to shortcut-key the symbols I needed.

Even if you have a ref guide open in your browser, then glance at it every now and then it’s certainly faster than constantly going to “Insert => Symbol” and faffing about for 5 minutes every time, plus I’ve found if you use one of the symbols enough times, it becomes second nature to just ° (oh…I mean hit ALT+0176).

Here’s the site I open most often for NumPad shortcuts (because it gives both IBM as well as Windows standards and sometimes one or the other doesn’t work): http://www.irongeek.com/alt-numpad-ascii-key-combos-and-chart.html

As you can see from the Google link, though, there are a LOT of other sites if you find IronGeek unsuitable.

Happy NumPad shortcutting!

— IEK

*Yes, I am old

**Like really old

***Yes, look I also am a MASSIVE nerd & this was how I had fun in highscool OK?