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The symbol or picture fonts that come with various programs can be great for adding small pictures to graphics and to word processing pages. Finding which keystroke makes which symbol or picture is frustrating and time-consuming, though, so we often give up on the whole idea.
Years ago I solved this for myself by making a chart in Word—version 2! Typing it up took ages, but now I can just use search and replace to get it to show me all of the characters from whichever font I’m interested in. It takes about a minute. I print it out and prop it by the computer and can easily find the symbols I want to use. The charts in this article were all made using the same file. I’ve explained how to use it in the file itself, then converted it to rtf and zipped it up. You can download it here. It’s less than 6kb. Please virus check the downloaded file before you unzip it, as you do with all downloaded things.
Heaps of fonts are available on CDs and on the Internet, but choose carefully. The more fonts you have running the less resources you’ll have available.
It’s a good idea, too, to keep any extra fonts in a separate folder. Windows will still find them, and you’ll know that none of the fonts in that folder are essential; you can disable or delete them without causing a catastrophe. More than one person has removed the Marlett font, thinking it looks pretty useless, only to find all the crosses, arrows and other symbols used throughout Windows have mysteriously disappeared.
If you have a font manager you can uninstall fonts without deleting them. This is the ideal arrangement.
Do be careful searching the Internet for free fonts. Many links lead to sites where fonts are offered for sale and finding the couple of free ones is difficult. More important, though, is the fact that some free fonts bring adware or spyware into your computer. Always run SpyBot or AdAware after visiting free font sites. Again, some free fonts may not really be the property of the person offering them.
Remember that fonts are like programs; they belong to someone. Make sure that a font is labelled Freeware before you decide to send it to all of your friends. When you look at a font by clicking Start > Settings > Control Panel > Fonts and then double click the font in which you’re interested, you’ll be able to read the details of its origin and ownership.
I’ve taken pictures of four of the more usual symbol fonts. Which others you have will depend on the programs you’ve installed. I haven’t included extended characters for all of these fonts, but I have done it for Arial and Wingdings so that you can see that there are often lots of useful symbols hidden away in each standard type font and interesting ones in the symbol fonts.
These four charts show you how to type particular symbols in the named fonts. Tapping a key will give you the symbol shown directly below it.
This article should print fairly satisfactorily, but if you want just one or two of the charts, each has a link to an individual page.
If you'd like to print just this chart, here's the Monotype Sorts chart by itself.
To save the picture, right click on it and click Save Picture As on the menu that appears.
If you'd like to print just this chart, here's the Webdings chart by itself.
To save the picture, right click on it and click Save Picture As on the menu that appears.
This link gives both the Wingdings Charts (normal keyboard and extended characters) by themselves for printing.
To save the picture, right click on it and click Save Picture As on the menu that appears.
This link gives the Zapf Dingbats chart by itself for printing.
To save the picture, right click on it and click Save Picture As on the menu that appears.
These are the symbols on the lower part of the character map. With the NUMBER LOCK ON, you hold down ALT and punch in the four digits. Until you release the ALT key, nothing happens, but when you do—there it is!
For printing, here's the Arial extended character chart by itself.
These are the symbols on the lower part of the character map. With the NUMBER LOCK ON, you hold down ALT and punch in the four digits. Until you release the ALT key, nothing happens, but when you do—there it is!
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Created on July 08, 2002
