Google Apps Hacks

34 GOOGLE APPS HACKS

HaCK 12:

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Find out about Unicode characters, and how you can use them in

your Google Docs documents.

There are more letters around than the ones you see on the keyboard. In fact, there are more

keyboards around than the one you’re used looking at. In Germany, for instance, the top letters row

starts with “QWERTZ” instead of the English “QWERTY,” and you’ll nd the “umlaut” character keys

Ö, Ü, and Ä on the right side.

But when the character you want isn’t on your keyboard at all, you need to look into software to get

what you need. Chinese users, for instance, use IMEs (Input Method Editors), which allow you to

enter basic letters (Pinyin), which are then “transliterated” into the Chinese symbol. Google also

offers an IME of their own for free download at http://tools.google.com/pinyin/.

On Mac OS X, when you need to enter a special character, click the input menu, which is a ag icon

in the menu bar (if it’s not visible, go to System Preferences→International→Input Menu and select

“Show input menu in menu bar”) and select Show Character Palette. You can search for characters

using this palette, and double-click on the desired character to insert it. In Windows, you can see this

character table by going to Start→Programs→Accessories→System Tools→Character Map. You

can switch to different groups in this list, and copy ...