Table of special characters with the ALT key  

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED how you can type characters like ¿ ¡ © € æ ñ ± etc. all of which are not on your keyboard? When you want to type the word naïve how do you type the character ï? Nothing can be simpler as you only need to know where the ALT key is. (I am talking about the ALT button, not the ALT GR button which is something else as it is meant to produce the third symbol). Thus by pressing the ALT key (and while keeping it pressed) type 139 you should be able to get ï. Try it out now if you like.

Note: ALT followed by 64 will give you the @ symbol needed to access your email account.  Learn this off by heart as you will need it if you cannot find the @ key when using a foreign country's keyboard (this has happened to me a number of times).

To type any of these special characters in Word or while writing your email press the ALT key (and keep it pressed) then type the number shown for the character one digit after another on the number pad to the right of your keyboard. When you've done that release the ALT key and the special character should appear. Thus to get the inverted question mark character ¿ just press the ALT key and type 168. By the way I was writing an email from a public library computer the other day when I found that the @ button was broken so I could not type the email address. Luckily I remembered that ALT followed by 64 will give me the @ symbol so that solved my problem. It's worth knowing this off by heart!
But if you are a webmaster and need to ensure that these special characters come out correctly in HTML format (that is, the internet page) then you need to replace them with HTML entities such as ç for ç and ï for ï. You can find a full list of special characters with their HTML entities here.

Remember, in order to get the special characters or symbols below, you need to press the ALT button and then type the corresponding number:


131 â   168 ¿   0128   132 ä   164 ñ   225 ß
133 à   124 |   35 #   130 é   64 @   92 \
33 !   63 ?   197 +   135 ç   128 Ç   228 õ
136 ê   245 §   199 Ã   198 ã   229 Õ   42 *
137 ë   162 ó   126 ~   138 è   161 í   224 Ó
139 ï   171 ½   222 Ì   160 á   253 ²   233 Ú
140 î   172 ¼   159 ƒ   141 ì   173 ¡   234 Û
142 Ä   174 «   175 »   221 ¦   235 Ù   190 ¥
143 Å   157 Ø   156 £   144 É   248 °   237 Ý
145 æ   216 Ï   208 ð   155 ø   154 Ü   239 ´
146 Æ   153 Ö   246 ÷   147 ô   179 ¦   152 ÿ
148 ö   180 ¦   211 Ë   210 Ê   241 ±   215 Î
149 ò   0169 ©   212 È   150 û   182 Â   243 ¾
151 ù   183 À   214 Í   184 ©   244   129 ü