This is a good trick.

Open Word. Now hold down the Alt key and type the numbers 0161 and release the Alt key; instead of those numbers showing up on the screen, you see an inverted exclamation mark. Now, this is only any use if you type in Spanish, but it demonstrates just one of the special characters that are tucked away in you computer but not on your keyboard.

To see them all, go to Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Character Map. A new window will open, and a grid of all of them will appear. Depending on the version you have, this may include Greek, Arabic numbers and many odd symbols.

You can copy and paste directly from this window into your document, but it is quicker to learn the magic key.  Click on one of the characters to highlight it, and then look in the bottom right of the window. Many (but not all) show the Alt-key number combination that makes it appear in your document. For example, © is ALT+0169; € is Alt+0128

Just make a note of it, and use that key combination whenever you want to type that symbol.

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