Clever s*ds - help required please!!

[Scurra]

It depends. There aren't "standard" characters for them (well, not the tick, anyway!) If you switch to the Wingdings font, however, you can. (Of course, if you are sending the file to someone else, you have to assume that they will have the Wingdings font as well, but on a Windows machine this is almost certain.)

The quick way to do it is to hold down the ALT key and type 0251 or 0252 on your numeric keypad --- not on the normal number keys. You can produce any character in a particular font this way, although obviously most of them are already on the keyboard!

[Bunnylump]

Damn. I knew there would be a drawback to a laptop. No alphanumeric keys. That sounded like a really helpful tip! (I've always ended up using a tick from clipart to get one, which is a huge pain in the rear.)

[Scurra]

There is a "pseudo" keypad on a laptop though?
It's usually accessed through the Function key (the numbers are often printed above the letters in blue or green so you can't see them! Try the I.O,P end of the keyboard.)

[Bunnylump]

Dinnae think so. But it might just be I can't see them.

[LAT]

I have a USB number pad I plug into my laptop when I am doing lots of numerical work at home. It only cost about a fiver I think and saves me so much time as I can do numerical stuff without really thinking about it, whereas using the numbers across the top is a real pain.

My laptop seems to have 1 2 3 on J K L, 4 5 6 on U I O and 7 8 9 on 7 8 9 going by the little blue numbers but I don't know how to access them. If it needs an extra key to be pressed each time you want a number then surely that is more trouble than it's worth?

[Scurra]

Laptops usually have a FN (function) key near the CTRL, ALT and shift keys. You use that to access the "blue" symbols (most commonly the extra features on the regular number keys; things like switching to an external monitor/projector.)

[LAT]

hmmm pressing the Fn key plus J K or L doesn't seem to do anything.

[SparkOut]

You usually have to press Fn + NumLk together or a similar key combination to put it into "number pad" mode before the number pseudo keys work.
The same key combination will toggle number pad mode off again.

[giraffe]

I just hold Fn on mine, but to do what Scurra said I hold Fn and alt then do the four numbers. (After all I need them to spell my name) However Fn + alt + 0251 or 0252 gives û and ü. I also find with my name it depends on what programme I'm in whether it works.

[Scurra]

Yes, that's why you have to switch to using the Wingdings font in something like a word processor. On this forum, for instance, you can't change your font so you get û and ü because they are the "standard" letters for those codes. Wingdings replaces all the letters with little pictures.

[giraffe]

The place I like to use ticks is a spreadsheet, but it comes up as ü there too. Did you mean you have to be in wingdings before you do the 0252 thing?

I get post with ? instead of the letter in my name sometimes, because it looks fine at my end when I type it in, but their machine obviously can't cope with it at their end! I have got to the point where I don't use the ö very often, especially as my parents put it over the wrong letter on my birth certificate and I have spent my whole life as a spelling mistake. (Used to really wind the languages teacher at school up because it was gramatically incorrect She couldn't get her head round the fact that it might be wrong but that was what it said on my birth certificate)

[gill216]

Slightly off topic but my grandson is probably a spelling mistake too. His middle name (Ciaran) has a fada to change the pronunciation. Its supposed to be prounced KEE-RON with the emphasis on the EE. While daddy can speak gaelic he's not so hot on writing it so poor grandson has probably got a really weird name.

[MBH]

They always go on about people having a 'working' ability with computers, and then you get to hear that "You can download the form from our website, fill it in on the computer, then return it as an email attachement at your convenience".... Sorry, but when you start with people who have never touched a keyboard before (as I do), this is NOT 'basic' computer use

Internally we have work forms to fill in as 'Word' documents that could be printed out and filled in by pen fine - but are a challenge (to ME) to make work on the computer. Don't get me wrong - I love the challenge (and have been reduced at times to using the 'draw a line' facility to creat a tick in a specific box - but I don't think it's fair on the average staff memeber.

Our laptops on the bus are HP Compaq and they have the blue Fn button and the secondary pad. I've just experimented and found out that the Fn button and the num-lock convert the letters to their number-pad operation without the re-pressing of the Fn button for the individual numbers. [That was far from obvious - but a little experimentation goes a long way ]

[Looby]

My sister-in-law was also blessed with a spelling mistake! Her name is Ceinwen, which is Welsh. Sadly her parents forgot one of the basic rules of English Langusge and she is Cienwen.

[Looby]

...and thanks Scurra!

[giraffe]

Mine came about because my mother thought our surname was very boring, almost as common as Smith, so she was trying to be original. My father wasn't helping and thought she'd gone too far when she found Zöe in a book. (with it's misprint) and said it would be nice to name me after great aunt Zoe, at which point mum was ready to cross the name off the list as there was one in the family. Once she realised my dad was pulling her leg the name stuck, and as the book had the misprint that was how she thought it was spelt. My godmother's husband worked for the local newspaper and went to great lengths to get the ö in the birth announcement!

Mind you it could be worse. My cousin is Karen pronounced Care-run. No one ever pronounces it right!

[clvrlad]

you could also use Character Map to copy the tick to the clip board and use CTRL+V to paste it when you want it

[gill216]

Mind you it could be worse. My cousin is Karen pronounced Care-run. No one ever pronounces it right!

I had a childhood friend Karen pronounced Care run! her godmother refused to say Karen at her christening because it sounded like carrot. So Care-run she was from that day on.

[giraffe]

I don't think Karen sounds like carrot! Mind you Keith always reminds me of teeth, and Sophie sounds a bit soapy.

[Scurra]

There's a good reason I try to avoid "rhyming" puzzles*! They are fraught with all sorts of problems. And let's not even go near dialect things.


*yes, I know I did one once. For which I am sorry.