You can insert special characters into a Word document either directly from your keyboard, by using the Insert menu, or by using the eXtyles Symbols menu. All methods are described in this section.

Inserting Special Characters from the Keyboard

The tables in this section list the shortcut keys you can use to insert special characters in a Word text.

The shortcut keys and ISO codes are summarized in two tables: one for commonly used special characters and another for accented letters.

When a comma separates two parts of a command short cut, you must follow two distinct steps to insert the character. First press and then release the keys leading up to the comma, then press the keys following the comma. For example, to type in an e with an acute accent (é):

1. Hold down the Control key and press the single quote (acute accent) key (´).
2. Release both keys.
3. Press the e key.

Inserting Commonly Used Special Characters

The following table lists keyboard shortcuts and ISO codes for commonly used special characters, including em and en dashes. "Num" keys refer to keys on the numeric keypad. For example, "Num-" is the minus sign on the numeric keypad.

Inserting Accented Letters and Other Special Characters

The following table lists keyboard shortcuts and ISO codes for inserting accented letters and other special characters. "Num" keys refer to keys on the numeric key pad. For example, "Num-" is the minus sign on the numeric keypad.

Inserting Special Characters Using the Insert Function

To insert special characters not listed in either of the previous tables:

1. Place the cursor at the location where you want to insert the character.
2. Select Symbol from the Insert menu.
   The Symbols tab displays a scrollable palette of accented letters, including Greek letters. The Special Characters tab contains characters such as en dash and em dash.
3. Select the desired symbol or special character from one of the tabs.
   If the appropriate symbol does not appear on the Symbols tab, you can search for it under different fonts.
4. Click the Font drop-down list and select a different font.

For some fonts, a Subset drop-down list appears, which lets you select a smaller character set within the font you have selected. The first character in the subset is highlighted in blue. The subsets correspond to Unicode subdivisions. For example, if you want to insert a spacing modifier letter into your text, select the Spacing Modifier Letters subset to find the first of these characters on the palette. Click on the character in blue to highlight it, then use the arrow keys to continue scrolling through the subset until you find the character you are looking for.

If a character with shortcut keys is highlighted on this tab, the shortcut keys appear in the lower right area of the form when the character is highlighted.

To insert a character from the Special Characters tab, highlight the appropriate special character and click Insert.

Inserting Special Characters from the eXtyles Symbols Menu

Insert special characters by selecting the primary menu item and then the appropriate secondary menu item.

This menu can easily be customized to allow easy insertion of additional special characters. For more information about customization of this menu, please contact eXtyles-support@inera.com.

Inserting Other Special Characters

Certain special characters cannot be inserted from the dialog. Use the methods described here to insert them:

1. Type a hyphen character at the keyboard.
2. Select the character.
3. From the Format menu, select Font and change the typeface to Symbol.

1. Type "223C". This is Unicode for the character ∼
2. Select the Unicode, and press Alt-X to toggle special character display.

If you start typing immediately after a special character, the text is likely to appear in the font of the special character (for example, Symbol font). If you must enter new text after a special character, reselect the default paragraph font after you insert the cursor and before you begin typing.

Creating Key Commands for Special Characters

You can create a custom key command to quickly insert frequently used special characters. The following procedure describes the steps used to assign the key command "Control-Shift-X" to insert the symbol χ.

1. Select Symbol from the Insert menu.
2. Highlight the χ symbol.
3. Click the Shortcut Key button.
4. When the Customize Keyboard dialog appears, place the cursor in the Press new shortcut key text box and press Ctrl-Shift-X on the keyboard.
5. Click the Assign button, then click Close twice.

Special Characters and Nonstandard Fonts

eXtyles accurately retains special characters if the characters are correctly retained by Microsoft Word when it opens a document. In general, Word accurately retains this information for documents that were authored either in Word for Windows or Macintosh Word. Word may not always display them correctly, but it generally retains the underlying information to allow the generation of a correct XML file.

You are most likely to encounter special character problems when using nonstandard fonts. eXtyles defines a standard font as one that:

1. Uses the same character set as Times New Roman, but is just a different typeface (for example, Arial, Courier, and so on)
2. Is a set of special characters for which special knowledge has been built into eXtyles (for example, Symbol, Monotype Sorts, MT Extra, and so on)

Inserting a Special Character in a font

Use the following procedure to enter a special character (for example, the plus/minus symbol: ±) in either the Find or the Replace dialog:

1. Insert the symbol somewhere within the document by selecting eXtyles > Insert and clicking the appropriate symbol.
2. Cut the character and paste it into the Find or Replace dialog.
3. Use the following procedure if the replace string contains more than one character style (for example, if you are changing "CD8+" to "CD8+"):
4. Type in the replacement text somewhere within the document and format it as needed using the Font function of the Format menu.
5. Cut the text to the clipboard.
6. Open the Replace dialog. Click the More button.
7. Place the cursor in the Replace with text box of the Replace dialog, click the Special button, and select Clipboard Contents.