Keyboard alt codes

[kphoger]

Am I the only who memorizes the alt codes?

ñ is alt+164
Ã' is alt+165
á is alt+160
Á is alt+0193
é is alt+130
É is alt+144
í is alt+161
Í is alt+0205
ó is alt+162
Ã" is alt+0211
ú is alt+163
Ú is alt+0218
ü is alt+129
Ü is alt+0220

ß is alt+225
Þ is alt+0222 / makes a good emoticon hat (o:Þ or tongue :-Þ
Ø is alt+0216 / makes a good null symbol
... is alt+0133
– is alt+0151
— is alt+0150
½ is alt+0189
¼ is alt+0188
¾ is alt+0190
° is alt+248
§ is alt+987654321123456789 / I'm sure there's a shorter one but I can never remember it

And the list goes on!

[NE2]

§ is alt+987654321123456789 / I'm sure there's a shorter one but I can never remember it

alt+789

[1995hoo]

The cent sign (¢) is Alt-0162. I use it fairly frequently, but that symbol seems to have been largely forgotten since it was omitted from computer keyboards. I've even seen toll rate signs in Florida that use the ugly form "Pay Toll $.50" (without the zero before the decimal point). Never understood why those signs can't say "50¢." Maybe they figure people have forgotten what it means.

I also use the euro sign (€, Alt-0128) and the pound sign (£, Alt-0163) relatively frequently. The two I use the most often are the em dash and en dash previously noted by kphoger, though.

[djsinco]

A few more:

Alt + 0153..... ™... trademark symbol
Alt + 0169.... ©.... copyright symbol
Alt + 0174..... ®....registered ­ trademark symbol
Alt + 0176 ...°......degree symbol
Alt + 0177 ...±....plus-or ­-minus sign
Alt + 0182 ...¶.....paragr­aph mark
Alt + 0190 ...¾....fractio­n, three-fourths
Alt + 0215 ....×.....multi­plication sign
Alt + 0162...¢....the ­ cent sign
Alt + 0161.....¡..... ­.upside down exclamation point
Alt + 0191.....¿..... ­upside down question mark
Alt + 1.......☺....smiley face
Alt + 2 ......☻.....black smiley face
Alt + 15.....☼.....sun
Alt + 12......♀.....female sign
Alt + 11.....♂......m­ale sign
Alt + 6.......♠.....spade
Alt + 5.......♣...... ­Club
Alt + 3.......♥...... ­Heart
Alt + 4.......♦...... ­Diamond
Alt + 13......♪.....e­ighth note
Alt + 14......♫...... ­beamed eighth note
Alt + 8721.... ∑.... N-ary summation (auto sum)
Alt + 251.....√.....square root check mark
Alt + 8236.....∞..... ­infinity
Alt + 24.......↑..... ­up arrow
Alt + 25......↓...... ­down arrow
Alt + 26.....→.....r­ight arrow
Alt + 27......←.....l­eft arrow
Alt + 18.....↕......u­p/down arrow
Alt + 29......↔...lef­t right arrow

[Molandfreak]

Alt+8675309=Jenny

[agentsteel53]

the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

[Mr_Northside]

the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I can type the euro symbol without typing Alt+0128 (AltGr+E gives me €).

[kphoger]

A few more:

By the way,

¡ (upside-down exclamation) is alt+173 (shorter than yours)
¿ (upside-down question) is alt+168 (also shorter)
Of course, once your fingers have memorized one, it's hard to learn a different one.

And, regarding √, I am very disappointed that there's no alt code for a true check mark.

Continuing in math,
÷ is alt+246
≈ is alt+247
² is alt+253

And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

No, I had not memorized the latter four.

I was just curious if people typed foreign language characters using alt-codes by memory, the way I do.  If the programs I use have hot keys for them, I have no clue.  I just use the alt code no matter what program I'm using.  One of the programs I use at work, though, rejects the "˜ and ' characters.  It lets me input them, but rejects my entire line of text once I hit Enter.

[Molandfreak]

And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

Well, I wouldn't have understood what that symbol was out of context... Is there possibly one with the curve detail from the original greek letter?

[kphoger]

And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

Well, I wouldn't have understood what that symbol was out of context... Is there possibly one with the curve detail from the original greek letter?

Yeah, it's called another font.  But they seem to have taken away that option on here.

[Molandfreak]

And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

Well, I wouldn't have understood what that symbol was out of context... Is there possibly one with the curve detail from the original greek letter?

Yeah, it's called another font.  But they seem to have taken away that option on here.

[Duke87]

Am I the only who memorizes the alt codes?

I keep an .rtf file with all sorts of odd characters in it. I just copy/paste out of that whenever I need something.

Also, I have a laptop and it does not have a numeric keypad - so I cannot type special characters by the alt code method.


Incidentally, I despise laptops with numeric keypads because the manufacturers always insist on centering the touchpad on the regular keyboard portion, which puts it off center relative to the whole body. I have OCD and this drives me batty. Also, I like having home, page up, page down, and end stacked at the right edge of the keyboard rather than having them clustered up top.

Yeah, I'm picky about how I like my keyboard laid out.

[agentsteel53]

the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

and I never memorize ALT codes.  in fact, if I ever need a special character, I usually google something like "capital U with umlaut" and copy/paste what I need.

[Big John]

and I never memorize ALT codes.  in fact, if I ever need a special character, I usually google something like "capital U with umlaut" and copy/paste what I need.

I just go to Character Map and pick the character from there.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I use two keyboard layouts (Legacy Canadian French and Canadian Multilingual), the combination of which covers pretty much everything I need in terms of Latin-script languages (pretty much all the Western European ones), plus some extra math and typographical stuff. For everything else, there's the Character Map in Windows.

The only Alt code I use frequently is Alt+0160 - Non-breaking space.

[formulanone]

If you used a PC in 1986, you had to (sort-of) memorize the Alt codes. I think the only ones I found much use for were 128, 129, 130, and 164. The last few pages in my DOS handbook had all the control characters, so I'd look them up if I needed it (Alt+7 was a "beep", I think).

[jwolfer]

now no one has an excuse for not using an ñ or Ã' when talking about Peña Blvd in Denver

[1995hoo]

I can type the euro symbol without typing Alt+0128 (AltGr+E gives me €).

The last time I saw a keyboard with "AltGr" was in the British Airways "Terraces" lounge on my last connection through Heathrow a few years ago (not coincidentally, the first time I saw a keyboard with "AltGr" was in the Concorde Room at Heathrow in 2003). I had a horrible time typing on that thing, just a few too many differences from a US-spec keyboard for me to type comfortably.


The whole Alt-codes discussion is semi-related to the use of autocorrection options in various programs such as MS Word. Sure, you can program a keystroke combination for some of these things. I have "]s" set to produce the section symbol § (Alt-0167) and "]p" set to produce the paragraph symbol ¶ (Alt-0182) because I use those frequently. I chose "]s" and "]p" simply because the firm where I used to work had those combinations programmed into everyone's autocorrect lists and so I got used to using them. Most people have seen how Word converts two hyphens into a dash, although unfortunately a lot of people erroneously use the en dash when the em dash is required because they put spaces around the dash, Word then converts it to an en dash, and people assume that's correct even though it's not. But the thing about the autocorrection is that it doesn't work in all software (what you program in Word doesn't work in Firefox, for example), so I wind up just knowing what the Alt combinations are for a lot of characters anyway.

I tend to use MS Word's autocorrect a lot for legal citation purposes. Legal citations are full of annoying and unnecessary periods (example: a case starting on page 1234 of volume 978 of the Federal Reporter, Second Series, is cited as "978 F.2d 1234"; in addition, legal citations use the old-fashioned abbreviations for states, so you wind up with "N.Y." or "N.J." and so on) and it's a pain in the arse to type them, so I wind up creating autocorrect entries for most of them (to use the "F.2d" example, I set it so typing "f2d" automatically expands into "F.2d"; similarly, for the South Eastern Reporter, "se2d" expands into "S.E.2d," and for court references like the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, "edva" becomes "E.D. Va."). I've learned over time that it's an underused tool because I've been amazed to find out how many colleagues I've known who never even thought of setting up autocorrect in this manner. Surely I'm not the only person who finds it damn annoying to get "U>S>" Back in the days of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, I reassigned some of the keys so that Shift-Period and Shift-Comma would give me a period or a comma, respectively, just like on a typewriter. But that's less convenient to do with Windows.

[agentsteel53]

the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

I actually wonder, for how many substrings of "3.141592..." does Alt plus the substring yield a pi symbol.

first, it helps to note that, on my computer anyway, typing in "Alt+3.14" gives the browser a 'back' command.  as in, before one even releases Alt - upon the "4", the browser goes back a page.

but I remember in the late 80s, playing around with Alt codes and discovering that, effectively, they are modulo 256.  so Alt+288 was the same as Alt+32 (a space).  so, in some contexts, it should be possible to type "Alt+3.141592..." and, upon release of Alt, yield a character.

it also appears that the period is somehow meaningful.  Alt+1.55 yields a "7", not the cent sign of Alt+155.

mathematically, an infinite number of prefix substrings of pi are the correct value, modulo 256 (whatever the correct value is, given that the "." appears to impart some meaning).  however, in reality there is a buffer which stores the keystrokes entered while Alt was held down.  there are two ways to implement this buffer.

1) make it finite length.  ignore all characters past, say, the 8th, so Alt+123456789 is the same as Alt+12345678.  or maybe it's the 80th.  in any case, when Alt is released, take the resulting string and make an integer 0-255 out of it using standard arithmetic.

2) make the buffer constantly running.  always store the current running value modulo 256, even as the user types in an infinite number of characters.  this is mathematically doable with just a tiny bit more overhead than is needed to store a value 0-255.  I can write out the algorithm if someone absolutely insists.

if the buffer is implemented as method 1, then there is likely not an Alt code which is a prefix of the decimal representation of pi that yields the pi character.  it would be quite the coincidence if it were.

if the buffer is implemented in method 2, then yes, we can eventually get a pi character by typing in Alt+the correct substring of pi.  in fact, there are an infinite number of substrings for which this is possible.  it is left as an exercise to the reader to determine how many digits the smallest substring is.

[djsinco]

the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

I actually wonder, for how many substrings of "3.141592..." does Alt plus the substring yield a pi symbol.

first, it helps to note that, on my computer anyway, typing in "Alt+3.14" gives the browser a 'back' command.  as in, before one even releases Alt - upon the "4", the browser goes back a page.

but I remember in the late 80s, playing around with Alt codes and discovering that, effectively, they are modulo 256.  so Alt+288 was the same as Alt+32 (a space).  so, in some contexts, it should be possible to type "Alt+3.141592..." and, upon release of Alt, yield a character.

it also appears that the period is somehow meaningful.  Alt+1.55 yields a "7", not the cent sign of Alt+155.

mathematically, an infinite number of prefix substrings of pi are the correct value, modulo 256 (whatever the correct value is, given that the "." appears to impart some meaning).  however, in reality there is a buffer which stores the keystrokes entered while Alt was held down.  there are two ways to implement this buffer.

1) make it finite length.  ignore all characters past, say, the 8th, so Alt+123456789 is the same as Alt+12345678.  or maybe it's the 80th.  in any case, when Alt is released, take the resulting string and make an integer 0-255 out of it using standard arithmetic.

2) make the buffer constantly running.  always store the current running value modulo 256, even as the user types in an infinite number of characters.  this is mathematically doable with just a tiny bit more overhead than is needed to store a value 0-255.  I can write out the algorithm if someone absolutely insists.

if the buffer is implemented as method 1, then there is likely not an Alt code which is a prefix of the decimal representation of pi that yields the pi character.  it would be quite the coincidence if it were.

if the buffer is implemented in method 2, then yes, we can eventually get a pi character by typing in Alt+the correct substring of pi.  in fact, there are an infinite number of substrings for which this is possible.  it is left as an exercise to the reader to determine how many digits the smallest substring is.

...finishes typing above, returns to action figure collection and browsing comic books...

[agentsteel53]

...finishes typing above, returns to action figure collection and browsing comic books...

astonishingly, no.  I've never gotten into either of those habits.  but I have been known to mutter "this sign has Prismo beading instead of Scotchlite, why must it do that".

[djsinco]

Thanks for being one of the first on this board I have found to be less thin-skinned. Good to see someone who can take a punch with aplomb!

(I despise those who are too serious.)

[Alps]

it also appears that the period is somehow meaningful.  Alt+1.55 yields a "7", not the cent sign of Alt+155.

Trivial work gives result that the "." resets the number. So Alt+1.55 = Alt+55.

[kphoger]

and I never memorize ALT codes.  in fact, if I ever need a special character, I usually google something like "capital U with umlaut" and copy/paste what I need.

That is certainly a lot more keystrokes than alt+0220.  Let me play this out.....

Using only my keyboard (which I prefer), I would need to do the following commands:

Ctrl+n to open a new window (2 strokes)
Alt+Home to go to Google (2 strokes)
capital u with umlaut then Enter to search (22 strokes)
Tab then Enter to go to the first page (2 strokes)
Ctrl+l to go to the taskbar (2 strokes)
Right arrow then Shift+Left arrow to copy the Ü out of the URL (3 strokes)
Ctrl+c to copy (2 strokes)
Alt+F4 to close the window (2 strokes)
Ctrl+v to paste (2 strokes)

.....for a total of 39 keystrokes (if I counted correctly), compared to only four by using the alt code, assuming the first hit on Google was the Wikipedia page.  Of course, if I can't remember the alt code, I may end up using 39 strokes to get it by trial and error (I can usually find the capital U "section" of the alt codes fairly quickly), but I type Spanish so frequently, I find it much more convenient to memorize the common characters.

If you used a PC in 1986, you had to (sort-of) memorize the Alt codes. I think the only ones I found much use for were 128, 129, 130, and 164. The last few pages in my DOS handbook had all the control characters, so I'd look them up if I needed it (Alt+7 was a "beep", I think).

Back in the day, I also had the color codes memorized for changing the color of the DOS text (if y'all don't know what I'm talking about, run cmd.exe and type "color 17" to get some old-school WordPerfect colors).