Q: How do you type a unusual characters like “≥” (greater-than-or-equal-to) in Microsoft Word? (via Quora)
A: It’s easy!
Every electronic keyboard has a set of built-in computer codes for a given language’s most-commonly-used letters, numbers and punctuation. These are the symbols you see printed permanently on the tops of your keyboard’s keys.
But the entire universe of extended characters — virtually any letter, number, punctuation mark, mathematical symbol, etc., in almost any language — can be typed in by manually entering the correct, standardized computer code for that character, even if it’s not on the keyboard.
There are standardized codes to represent virtually any letter, number, punctuation, or symbol that you might want to generate. Some of the major code types include Unicode, ASCII (which includes decimal, hex, and octal versions), and HTML.
Which code you need to use depends on what equipment you’re using (e.g. Apple vs Microsoft), and what your intended medium is (printed document, web page, etc.)
In practice, there are two steps to finding the code you want:
First, in whatever document/webpage/file/etc. creation tool you’re using, open its Help system and search for extended characters. The info there will tell you how to enter unusual, not-on-the-keytops characters into whatever document or file you’re trying to create. For example, this Microsoft Help Page shows how to enter extended characters in Word/Office.
Next, following the directions on the above Help page, use any of the many available lookup tables (e.g. Unicode, ASCII, HTML…) to find the correct code for whatever character or symbol you’re your trying to create, and then simply type it in.
That’s all it takes!
For example here are the codes for GREATER-THAN OR EQUAL TO: ≥
ASCII: 0242
UNICODE: U+02265
HEX CODE: ≥
HTML CODE: ≥
HTML ENTITY: ≥
CSS CODE: \2265
Following the instruction on the Microsoft Help page for Office 365, you enter an ASCII character by pressing and holding down ALT while typing the character code on the numeric keypad. So, to insert ≥, press and hold down ALT while typing 0242 on the numeric keypad. Simple!
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