Existing symbols - and these are not only letters, numbers, mathematical and punctuation signs, and many others - are much larger than the keys on a computer keyboard. The people at Microsoft who designed the Windows system solved this problem by assigning each character a unique code entered using the Alt key.

To get acquainted with the list of all existing symbols, you need to go to the "Start" menu and then:
All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Symbol Table
This will open the character table in Unicode.

For reference: Unicode is a character encoding standard that allows you to represent the characters of almost all written languages. Unicode was originally created to eliminate encoding errors.

To translate the table into an encoding convenient for you, you need to check the box next to "Advanced viewing options" and use the drop-down menu to select the required character set ("Cyrillic" for the Russian language).

Alt codes
To dial the Alt code, you need to hold down the Alt key and press the indicated digits of the code one by one, after which the Alt key is released. The symbol will appear when the key is released.

HTML mnemonics
In addition to Alt codes, the table contains HTML mnemonics.

A mnemonic is the encoding of a character in HTML that begins with the ampersand "&" and ends with a semicolon ";".

Accordingly, in HTML, for example, the greater than symbol can be written in two ways:
> - as a regular character
> - as a mnemonic code;

A character can only be displayed if it is represented in the font being used. Otherwise, you'll see a rectangle, a question mark, and something else indicating no image for the specified character.
Now this problem is successfully solved thanks to plug-in fonts.

Keyboard special character table

Greetings, dear readers! Today I will show you how to type special characters on the keyboard using the Alt key. If you didn’t quite understand what I was talking about from the title of the article, I’ll explain in more detail.

There are symbols that are simply not on the keyboard, but at the same time they can be used quite often (paragraph icon, arrow, suit, heart). The question immediately arises, how to write this or that character, which is not on the keyboard. How to do this will be discussed in this article.

Here are examples of such characters:

☻☺ ♣♠◘○♀♪♂☼ ↕☼↓→§

Naturally, these are not all symbols, there are many more. You can find the full table with these symbols below.

And now I will tell you how to print these characters.

So, already from the name it is clear that we will use the Alt key! But we need other keys too!

In the picture below you can see all the keys we need and where they are located:

So, in order to print a particular character, you need to hold down the Alt key and use the additional panel with numbers to type the code of the character we need (character codes can be taken from the table below). Moreover, it is important to follow the sequence, that is, if you first press 1, and then 2, then the symbol with the number 12 will pop up, and if you do the opposite: first 2, and then 1, then you will get a completely different symbol with the number 21.

For example, the emoticon code (☺) is 1. So, to print a smiley, you need to press the Alt key and, without releasing it, press “1” in the additional panel with numbers, then you need to release the Alt key and the character will be printed.

To print an arrow (→) with code 26, you need to hold down the Alt key, then alternately press first "2", then "6", and then release the Alt key. The character will be printed immediately.

Here is a table of the most common symbols with their numbers:

This was the easiest way to print these characters, but not the only one.

There is also such a thing as a symbol table. No, we are not talking about the yellow table above. Every Windows computer has such a "Character Map" application.

This application is located in this location:

In this folder there are a bunch of all sorts of system files, including “charmap”. In order not to look for it in that giant list, use the hot key combination Ctrl + F and type “charmap” into the search. After starting the application, the following table will open:

You need to find and select the symbol you need, then copy it from the bottom line and paste it in the place you need. Quite convenient too!

In the Windows family of operating systems, to enter a character that is not on the keyboard into a document, you need to press the left or right Alt key and, while holding it, type a certain number using additional numeric keypad, called Numpad; then release the key (Alt) ... Hence the name of such combinations follows: Alt codes or Alt sequences.

Try; for example, press the left Alt and the number 1 on Numpad "e - a smiley should appear (☺):

With the Russian keyboard layout, combinations work only with left Alt key; in English - with both: left and right.

Roughly speaking, there are two types Alt codes: WITHOUT leading zero and WITH leading zero...

Combinations without a leading zero range from 1 to 255, then repeat; i.e. Alt+257 is the same as Alt+1; Alt+258 - Alt+2 and so on (256 is a kind of border).

Basic combinations with a leading zero are in the range from 0128 to 0255 and differ mainly from combinations WITHOUT a leading zero in that in different keyboard layouts they may mean different characters.

The tables show all the characters available in different systems. Therefore, if you really need Alt codes, look through all the tables to the end. You will definitely find what you are looking for.

Hello dear readers. Today we will look at how to quickly type different types of characters in the text. This so-called alt code. Why it is called alt code, how to use it, you will learn from this article. The bonus will be character table and alt codes.

Alt code

What is an alt code? Alt code are the characters that are displayed when pressing the key combination on the keyboard Alt + X , where X this is a set of numbers (a certain number) on the NumPad "e. Numpad this is a block of numbers on the keyboard, usually located on the right. Alt symbols on a PC with operating systems of the family Windows not available when using a regular keyboard. They can only be called with additional commands. Hold down the ALT button and type the number in decimal. I hope everything is clear here. The table will help you navigate.

Table of alt symbols and alt-codes for them

Alt + 0769 - will help you put the accent mark over the previous letter.
That's about all there is to it.