Typing Special Symbols in OS X and iOS
I’m a university law professor, and apparently I’m the only person who has ever wanted to type the © and ® and ™ symbols. I can’t find them on my iPhone, and I can’t find them on my Mac. I need to type these symbols regularly.
On your iPhone, most special symbols and accented letters can be found by pressing and holding down different keys on your iPhone’s keyboard. Give it a try--you’ll be surprised at what you find when you press and hold on a key.
But those three common symbols, the © and ® and ™ symbols, can only be found on the iPhone’s hidden emoticon keyboard. Strangely enough, Apple has only enabled this emoticon keyboard on iPhones sold in Japan. So if you want access to this special keyboard, you’ll have to cough up 99 cents to purchase the iEmoji app from the App Store.
iEmoji opens up a whole new world of symbols and icons on your iPhone.
Not only will iEmoji give you the three symbols that are currently missing from your iPhone’s keyboard, but it will give you over 600 adorable icons you can use as well. While the three symbols you need should display on anyone’s computer or phone, the other icons will only appear on iPhones, so they are best used for sending text messages to other iPhone users.
Oh, and on your Mac, the copyright symbol © is Option-G, the registered trademark symbol ® is Option-R, and the trademark symbol ™ is Option-2. For additional symbols, check the menus in the applications you’re using for an “Insert special characters” option or install the handy shareware program PopChar X (€30, ergonis.com).
This is how Keyboard Viewer looks when you press the Option key.
To see which symbols have keyboard shortcuts associated with them, enable the Keyboard Viewer Input menu in your menu bar (located in System Preferences > International in 10.5, or System Preferences > Language & Text in 10.6). Then, choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the new icon in your menu bar and press Option, Shift, or both Option and Shift to see the different symbols that you can type.
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Michellekw
March 24, 2012 at 7:47am
I am using Mac OS X 10.7 and have upgraded to Lion. Ever since I upgraded I have been having difficulty entering special characters onto Facebook. When I insert them, I can see them on the page and then when I hit the Enter key, they no longer appear on the page. Help! It used to work fine when I used Snow Leopard. Thank you!
Michellekw
March 24, 2012 at 7:46am
I am using Mac OS X 10.7 and have upgraded to Lion. Ever since I upgraded I have been having difficulty entering special characters onto Facebook. When I insert them, I can see them on the page and then when I hit the Enter key, they no longer appear on the page. Help! It used to work fine when I used Snow Leopard. Thank you!
Kkrimmer
September 15, 2010 at 4:04pm
These are also ASCII/HEX code characters which are listed on this app http://tinyurl.com/acomputerdictionary
J Keirn-Swanson
September 14, 2010 at 11:20am
On your desktop or laptop, open a Word document or email, then go through your keyboard typing ALT-1, Return, ALT-2, Return, all the way through the keys, then do it again using Shift-ALT-1 etc. Send this document to your iPhone by whatever means you typically use, and save it as a note.
Then you can just scroll through the note to find the symbol you want.
You can even fiddle with the order and put the ones you use most often on top.
Free save for the time it takes.
Noelle Mena @Ta...
September 13, 2010 at 5:19pm
Then when you open it- its Emoji
Its the best one I found and have used forever.
acexsace
September 13, 2010 at 11:25am
I am using the apps called Emoji Free from Awesomest Software. This is a Free and it has those 2 symbols plus a whole lot more.
sactobob
September 13, 2010 at 10:28am
Please tell us which app.... "iemoji" gets 42 hits on an App Store search and many of these are 99¢, so it would be nice to know which. Thanx.
fyrebrand
September 13, 2010 at 10:18am
There are free apps, sometimes the paid ones are on sale. Or you can do the free app, Spell Number. It has an easter egg that allows you to unlock the emoji keyboard. Just do a search in iTunes for "free emoji".
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