Inserting a symbol

You can insert any character from any font installed on your system, by using the Insert menu’s Symbol option. Via a dialog, characters can be viewed by Unicode character or glyph equally, and then inserted.

To insert a symbol character:

  1. Select the Pointer Tool and click in the text for an insertion point.

  2. Choose Symbol from the Insert menu, and select a symbol from the submenu. These are commonly used symbols including space-related symbols (non-breaking, Em, En, and zero-width spaces), Registered, Trademark, and Em/En Dash symbols, and more.

  3. If you need a symbol not shown on the submenu and/or you want to insert symbols by glyph rather than by character, select Other… to display the Insert Symbol dialog. The dialog remains open so you can continue editing in the workspace as you select symbols.

  4. Select a Font to display its full character set, and then scroll the font table to view characters. You can choose from the Subset list to jump to a particular range within the character set.

  5. To view characters as Unicode or as glyphs, enable the Unicode or Glyphs radio button, respectively.

  6. Click any individual character (or select it while browsing using the arrow keys on your keyboard) to view the character’s name and Character Code (hexadecimal) at the bottom of the dialog.

    You can also enter any Unicode or Glyph hex value (e.g., as U+40 or G+163) and click Go to jump to that particular character in the current font.

  7. To insert a character into your text, double-click it (or select it and click Insert).

  • The memory row below the font table keeps track of characters you’ve recently inserted. Double-click any character in the row to insert it again.

  • While Unicode characters remain the same between different fonts, glyphs can be different according to the font used. Unicode and glyph characters may not be supported by the font.

  • For common symbols, you can use keyboard shortcuts (see Character Shortcuts). You can also use a convenient keyboard switch to enter subscripts or superscripts.

Inserting a symbol