Put special characters into the posts, eg ALT14=?

Arrr, that came out better in the edit box to put this post in. Must be a different font. Just goes to show, I can not remember.

Hello vdV - I used to have a big list of those characters but think I must have left it at work years ago, and do you think I can remember any of them. NO! I now remember the é one thanks to writing André's name.
There are certainly some of the characters that come in handy. ♣♠♥♦ there's a pack of playing cards.☻☺

Oh, they come out all distorted once posted.

Alt 13 = ♪

alt 1 = ☺ 2 = ☻ 3 = ♥ 4 = ♦ 5 = ♣
alt 6 = ♠ 7 = • 8 = ◘ 9 = ○ 10 = ◙
I got these just by entering the numbers but they
may not be what you mean. This is the first time I've heard of it. What a neat trick! ☺☺☺

Yes there are many of them, but who can remember them, also it depends where you type them, for example ALT14=♫ here but it gave me a ? in the title. And in the statement below the title when I was entering it they all looked good, but when they came up on this page most whent to ?.

For those that do not know how to get these characters: hold down the 'ALT' key while typing the numbers on the numeric key pad, then release the 'ALT' key.

1-9 ☺☻♥♦♣♠•◘○
10-19 ◙♂♀♪♫☼►◄↕‼
20-29 ¶§▬↨↑↓→←∟↔
30-31 ▲▼
128-129 Çü
130-139 éâäàåçêëèï

There are 255 of them, but many are the normal keys, eg ALT 49=1 50=2 51=3; all the numbers, punctuation, letters (upper and lower case): numbers 32 to 127 are normal ones (on you key board)

I think it would be easier if we just had a table to select them from.

ALT
140-149 îìÄÅÉæÆôöò
150-159 ûùÿÖÜø£Ø׃
160-169 áíóúñѪº¿®
170-179 ¬½¼¡«»░▒▓│

180-189 ┤ÁÂÀ©╣║╗╝¢
190-199 ¥┐└┴┬├─┼ãÃ
200-209 ╚╔╩╦╠═╬¤ðÐ
210-219 ÊËÈıÍÎÏ┘┌█
220-229 ▄¦Ì▀ÓßÔÒõÕ
230-239 µþÞÚÛÙýݯ´
240 ­
241-249 ­±‗¾¶§÷¸°¨
250-255 ·¹³²■ 

There you go, just copy and paste the one(s) you want. Not 240 gives nothing.

Not 240 = Note 240

##### | #####
# _ _ #|# _ _ #
# | #
| ############
# #
| # #
# #
| | # # | |
| | # # |
| | | # .-. # |
#( O )# | | |
| ################. .############### |
## _ _|____| ### |_ __| _ ##
# | | #
# | | | | | | | | #
######################################
# #
#####
OOOOOOO|OOOOOOO

Sorry, didn't come out right

vdV if you go to http://www.chris.com/ascii/ there are some really clever examples of special character drawing, especially planes.

They are nice Lynda, a lot of thought has gone into some of them!

None of that words for me. In Word, the alt key brings up end-note (a bibliography program). But I also get no response from the alt key in the comment box or in Notepad. Is this a hardware or a software problem?

Aha! I have to press the function key as well because I am on the laptop and I should be using a numeric keyboard. ☺

BUT some of the combinations make the browser go forwards, or back, or to my home page and this happens with both Firefox and IE. Oh well, at least I can access some. ♪ ♪ ♪ ☻ ♪ ♪ ♪

For some reason, some don't work here. I'll test a few...
Alt 3 ♥ (heart)
Alt 1 ☺ (happy face)
Alt 4 ♦ Alt 5 ♣ Alt 6 ♠ (Card suits)
Alt 15 ☼ (sun)
Alt 11 ♂ (male)
Alt 12 ♀ (female)
Alt 0162 ¢ (cent)
Alt 0176 ° (degrees)
Alt 13 ♪ (musical note)
Alt 14 ♫ (double note)
Now I'll "submit" and see what happens!

As you can see, some work and some don't!
Oh well, I tried

≈⌡≈
.>>.
lemme try!

ok, one more try...
≈i≈
..>..

A couple of points have been made, but they're worth repeating.

1. On a desktop computer, use the numeric keypad, not the row of numbers at the top. And make sure the Numbers Lock is on.

2. On a laptop (or at least on mine), the numbers lock light does not have to be on. But you have to press Function (Fn) and Alt together, and hold them down while typing the numbers. And again, don't use the numbers row at the top of the keyboard; use the built-in keypad (JKL=123).

3. In Windows XP, there is a function called a Character Map (accessible through Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Character Map). Symbols and characters can be copied and pasted, and some have an Alt+ code displayed for direct entry. [Others use Unicode, not so easy to use as Alt+.]

I used to use Windows, but I had an old laptop that could only use Windows 98 SE at the highest.

I did remember that:
1. There were 2 Alt keys and they worked differently. Only the one to the right of the spacebar gave me characters.
2. Some characters:
é was Alt-e
ü was Alt-y
ö was Alt-p
ä was Alt-q
ß was Alt-S

Just try them all.
I was using the US International keyboard, but I had some problems. It would always treat double quotes as umlauts. But MS was not kind enough to give me a way to install both US-International and plain US. I did some research and found that English-Australia was the exact same keyboard as English-US, so I installed that and switched between the 2.

I now use Mac OS X on a desktop (Mac Mini). There it is much easier. The "option" key will only give you floating accents, so it's always 2 keystrokes, but it's a lot less confusing.

If you want to see the whole selection of Opt- and Shift-Opt characters, call up: Show Keyboard Viewer. On mine it's on the upper right corner under the flag (which indicates locale and does not show up under some settings).

Also, Opt-Cmd-T in most but not all applications gives you the character, which shows you the whole Unicode set, and shows the character, IF you have a font that contains it.

Also, by the way, I see from the page source that this web site does not specify the character set or character encoding. I know that the default for HTML is UTF-8 (Unicode), but I don't know if that always works.

If the next line shows a black sun, an umbrella, and the yin yang symbol, then it does accept UTF-8:
☼ ☂☯ and ☒ Clinton

Thanks everyone who've posted above.
I found all that info very helpful and, stupid me, have often wondered how you all did it.

Jus' cuz you dont know somethin yet dont mean yer stupid, CynB.

¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘«åß ;∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æΩ≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷è`ˆå
Using a mac, from 1 through numbers then through alphabet. Still havn't found the notes, which is the ones I hoped I would find. Anyone got any advice?

elsie try this it might be what you are after.

http://academic.evergreen.edu/projects/biophysics/technotes/program/ascii_ext-mac.htm