Alt plus symbols. Symbols on the keyboard using the Alt key. How to take advantage of these hidden symbols

For systems using English, code page 437 is used. Most other systems using the Latin alphabet use code page 850. For a complete list, see the article “Code page”

These codes became so well known that Microsoft was forced to use Windows-1252 and similar international sets in the new Windows 95 operating system in order to maintain the ability to use Alt codes. By holding Alt and typing three digits (the first one is not zero), you can translate a character from CP437 into the corresponding character in the Windows page code. By first typing a leading 0 (zero) and then a number, you can write the character from the Windows code page.

For example, Alt + 161 produces “í” (the Latin letter i with a dot on top), which is in the 161st position in CP437 and CP850. Alt+0161 produces the "¡" character (an inverted exclamation point), which is in the 161st position in Windows-1252.

When Windows switched to Unicode, Alt characters were preserved: leading 0 codes became even more popular. There is also another way: to enable it, the user must install or create a registry key HKCU\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad with type REG_SZ and value 1 and restart the computer. After this you can use the third method:

• Hold down the Alt key. Press the "+" key on the numeric keypad.
• While holding Alt, enter a hexadecimal number using the numeric keypad for numbers 0-9 and the regular keys for characters a-f.

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✪ We type a character that is not on the keyboard. Table of Alt codes.

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List of codes

English layout

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

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

Here are examples of such symbols:

☻☺ ♣♠◘○♀♪♂☼ ↕☼↓→§

Naturally, these are not all symbols, there are many more of them. You can find a complete table with these symbols just 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 will need other keys too!

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

So, to print this or that character, you need to hold down the Alt key and, using the additional panel with numbers, 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 a symbol with number 12 will pop up, and if you do the opposite: first 2, and then 1, then a completely different symbol with number 21 will pop up.

For example, the emoticon code (☺) is 1. This means that to print an emoticon, you need to press the Alt key and, without releasing it, click on “1” in the additional panel with numbers, then you need to release the Alt key and the symbol will be printed.

To type 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 symbol will be printed immediately.

Here is a table of the most common characters 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 this Symbol Table application.

This application is located in this location:

This folder contains a bunch of all sorts of system files, including “charmap”. In order not to look for it in that giant list, use the hotkey Ctrl + F and type “charmap” into the search. After launching 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 into the place you need. Quite convenient too!

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

Alt code

What is alt code? Alt code are the characters that are output when you press the keyboard shortcut Alt + X, where X this is a set of numbers (a specific number) on the NumPad. NumPAd This is a block of numbers on the keyboard, usually located on the right. Alto symbols on PCs with family operating systems Windows not available when using a regular keyboard. They can only be called using additional commands. Hold down the ALT button and enter the number in the decimal number system. 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 place an accent mark above the previous letter.
That's probably all there is to it.

What is alt code? Alt code is the characters that are displayed when you press the key combination on the keyboard Alt + X, where X is a set of numbers (a specific number) on the NumPad. NumPAd is a block of numbers on the keyboard, usually located on the right. Alto symbols on a PC with operating Windows systems are not available when using a regular keyboard. They can only be called using additional commands. Press the ALT button and type the number in the decimal number system. I hope everything is clear here. The table of Alt codes will help you navigate and find the desired character.

Attention! Enter numbers on the side Num-pad keyboard.

English layout

Russian layout

Knowing what ALT codes are and how to use them, you will be able to quickly enter many characters from the keyboard for which separate keys are not initially provided.

We often see them on website pages. There are especially many of them in the statuses of social network users. In addition, we find them in various printed materials: magazines, newspapers, books... Almost everywhere where there is a place for any typography, you can find alt codes.

It all started with a dash

The idea for this article was prompted by a situation at work when hyphens in one of the numerous documents were changed to a normal em dash. To enter the latter, I used the CTRL+- key combination on the numeric keypad in Word. However, knowing a little HTML and remembering that it has two types of dashes (long - - and short - -), I wondered if it was possible to enter its different types from the keyboard?

Having started searching in this direction, I came across the 97th paragraph of “Kovodstva Rus” from the famous domestic designer Artemy Lebedev. It says that you need to distinguish between 4 dash symbols: hyphen, minus, short and em dash.

But on the keyboard we only have a hyphen (and it’s not really a hyphen, as it turns out), so the remaining characters need to be added in a special way: using special alt codes. To enter them, you need to hold down the ALT key and press certain combinations of numbers on the side numeric keypad with the NumLock switch active. On laptops without additional numeric keys, their functions are usually performed by the buttons on the right side of the keyboard with the Fn modifier key held down. All this is indicated in the form: ALT + digital code:

But this, it turns out, is not all! Digging deeper, I found another very interesting one, where the author talks about how there are at least 9 (!) different lines in total, which can be not only hyphens and dashes! So, for example, I learned that on the keyboard, the button that many call a minus or a hyphen actually enters a separate character altogether - a hyphen-minus, which is slightly longer than a hyphen, but shorter than a minus!

In general, the topic of alt codes and HTML codes turned out to be very interesting and I decided to study the issue more thoroughly...

Where do ALT codes come from?

The history of alt codes dates back to the times of the MS-DOS operating system. There, when you hold down the ALT key and enter a certain numerical sequence on the numeric keypad, this sequence is interpreted by the BIOS and output directly as an ASCII character with the corresponding code.

With the advent and spread of Windows, ASCII character tables migrated to various text encodings, maintaining partial compatibility, character sets and the mechanism of ALT codes. To view all the characters available in a certain font and find out their codes, you can use the standard program Symbol table(WIN+R - charmap - Enter). By the way, you can copy the necessary icons from it in visual mode:

Today there are three types of alt codes:

1. Regular- are entered by holding the ALT key and typing numbers from 1 to 255. In this case, code 256 (like 0) does not give any character, and after 256 all characters are repeated with a frequency of 256, that is, 1=257=513=769.. ., 2=258=514=770... etc. Essentially, we have an 8-bit character set (28 = 256) defined for the Windows encoding.
2. 0-leading- are entered in the same way as usual, but they always use zero as the first digit. 0-leading ALT codes do not match regular ALT codes in number, but contain partially repeated characters. For example, the paragraph icon in regular codes is inserted using the combination ALT+21, and in leading 0 codes - ALT+0167. Like regular ones, they contain 256 characters and are repeated in the same way after the code 0256, but their character set corresponds to the old ASCII set. Typically, when entering in Russian and English keyboards, characters with the same code are different (see tables below).
3. Hexadecimal or Unicode - as a rule, are not available for input under normal conditions. Unicode characters can only be displayed normally on web pages (entered in HTML code using the “character_code” scheme or using special mnemonics) or in word processors such as Microsoft Office Word or OpenOffice Writer. In the latter, they can be entered as regular ALT codes, taking into account the conversion of the number system from hexadecimal to decimal. That is, to add, for example, the same paragraph icon that has the code “00A7” in the symbol table, you need to enter the code “0167” while holding down the ALT button. You can quickly convert a hexadecimal number to the decimal system in the standard Windows Calculator by activating “View” - “Programmer”, switching the input mode from “Hex” to “Dec”:

Let's pay a little more attention to hexadecimal codes. Unlike regular ALT codes and leading 0s, they can contain up to 65536 characters (216 = 65536). In this case, the first 256 characters coincide with the classic ASCII set and, accordingly, with leading 0 characters, but are not limited to them. In order to distinguish Unicode characters from regular ALT codes, they are often written using the “U + character_code” scheme (we can find such an entry in the Character Table).

In Windows, it is possible to enable direct input of hexadecimal ALT codes without converting them to decimal. For this it is courageous to open Registry Editor(WIN+R - regedit - Enter), go to section HKCU\Control Panel\Input Method and add a new one there String section(type REG_SZ) with name EnableHexNumpad and meaning 1 , and then restart the computer:

After the reboot, you will be able to enter U-codes in the same form in which they are written in the Symbol Table. The only caveat is that while entering a number, you will not only need to hold down ALT, but also press the “+” button on the numeric keypad before the code itself (if the required character has not been added, “+” must be held together with ALT).

Alt code tables

A complete list of all font characters, as we found out, can be found in the Character Table, and here we will provide complete tables of regular ALT codes and leading 0s.

Table of common alt codes

Table of 0-leading alt codes (Russian layout)

Table of leading 0 alt codes (English layout)

A few explanations for the tables. With ordinary alt codes, I think everything is clear. But a number of initial and some subsequent 0-leading ALT codes, as we could see in the tables, produce incomprehensible characters (after them there are explanations in parentheses). These characters are called control characters and came into modern OSs along with ASCII codes, which were once used to control punched paper tapes!

Also note that in the English and Russian layouts, the leading 0 alt codes are only half the same. The second half, where the Cyrillic alphabet is introduced in the Russian-language layout, is reserved for all kinds of letters with diacritics in the English-language layout.

Character fonts and alternative keyboard layouts

Undoubtedly, ALT codes are a very useful thing. But remembering them all is quite difficult, and given the presence of Unicode characters, it is almost impossible! From here we have at least three options:

1. Remember only the most frequently used ALT codes for punctuation.
2. Create a special layout with an extended set of characters available for input.
3. Use alternative fonts with the desired symbols instead of letters.

The first option at first glance seems to be the most optimal. It does not require any additional actions other than remembering codes to enter the required characters. To memorize it faster, I recommend that you find it on the Internet or make it yourself a sign with the most useful alt codes and print it out. Here is an example of one of these signs that is freely available on the Internet:

Similar tables can be found for remembering HTML code and mnemonics. The most successful version of the latter, in my opinion, is collected in the corresponding article on Wikipedia.

The second option is more tricky and requires intervention in the system. It consists in replace the standard keyboard layout with an alternative one, which uses modifier keys more effectively by inserting certain characters in given combinations.

Today, one of the best alternative Russian-language layouts for Windows and MacOS is Ilya Birman’s Typographic Layout:

The principle of operation of the Birman layout is similar to the principle of operation of ALT codes. Only, unlike them, it uses not the left, but the right ALT (ALT GR). To enter the characters indicated in the top row, in addition to ALT GR, you also need to hold down SHIFT. To memorize faster, you can cut out and paste the layout symbols onto the keyboard or print them out and use them as a cheat sheet.

To install the Birman layout, you need to download it from the website using the link above and install it as a regular program. Then from the Control Panel or Language Panel Properties, open the Language settings and click the "Options" button to the right of the "Russian" option. In the window that opens, in the “Input methods” group, click “Add input method” and in the list of layouts, select a new typographic layout, and then remove the standard one. A reboot may be required to save changes:

The most interesting option for solving the problem of entering non-traditional characters is the use of alternative symbolic or icon fonts. Such fonts have recently become most popular in web design, since they contain scalable vector images that can be used for various buttons and infographics on modern websites.

Character fonts allow you to display certain icons instead of regular letters when you press keyboard keys. Since there are usually many such icons, they are also contained in the extended symbol table, from where they are displayed using ALT codes or HTML codes in Unicode style:

The most popular fonts in modern web design are FontAwesome, GLYPHICONS, Web Symbols and others. In addition, we cannot fail to mention the Fontello service, which allows you to independently assemble your own set of icons from popular symbol fonts and save them in a single file!

Conclusions

Knowing how to insert this or that character into the text using ALT codes, you can always quickly and competently layout any web page or design a document. As a last resort, with the help of them you can decorate your VKontakte or Odnoklassniki profile with hearts and suns, as many do :)

Well, if you don’t have enough characters in standard fonts, you can always use alternative ones that contain high-quality graphics instead of letters. True, such fonts, alas, won’t show off on social networks, but you can use them on your own website or blog! The main thing is not to overdo it;)

P.S. Permission is granted to freely copy and quote this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.