Displaying special characters in stories

[manyeyedhydra]

Anyone know how to do this?

I used some odd characters to make a character name look a little bit more unusual, but they came out as '?' marks. I think I need to use the unicode reference (&somethingorother) to make sure they display correctly, but I'm not sure.

Anyone have any knowledge on this?

Ta.

 

[past_perfect]

Anyone know how to do this?

I used some odd characters to make a character name look a little bit more unusual, but they came out as '?' marks. I think I need to use the unicode reference (&somethingorother) to make sure they display correctly, but I'm not sure.

Anyone have any knowledge on this?

Ta.

Hm, not sure this will help, but this tutorial contains a bit of code to test your formatting in your word-processor before submitting:

Test formatting

 

[Weird Harold]

Hm, not sure this will help, but this tutorial contains a bit of code to test your formatting in your word-processor before submitting:

Test formatting

Thanks for the plug, but my tutorial doesn't cover how to make special characters display, only how to spot them when they aren't displaying properly.

The book HTML for Dummies contains a quick reference list for the official HTML variable names for special characters -- there are similar lists online. There is probably also a list somewhere that has the semi-official list of extended numeric codes for special characters, but I prefer the HTML names becaue it is easier to remember È instead of '#200' (È).

A quick google search for special character codes turned up this table of symbolic and numeric values: http://www.1stsitefree.com/special_characters.htm


(The variable names don't work within posts at Lit, because HTML is disabled, but the numeric reference does, including when I went to edit the post.)

 

[oggbashan]

I use the ALT key. Hold down the ALT key and type the numbers.
Here is a list that are appropriate to a UK keyboard:

Alt keys UK Keyboard

Alt 126 = ~
Alt 127 = ⌂
Alt 128 = Ç
Alt 129 = ü
Alt 130 = é
Alt 131 = â
Alt 132 = ä
Alt 133 = à
Alt 134 = å
Alt 135 = ç
Alt 136 = ê
Alt 137 = ë
Alt 138 = è
Alt 139 = ï
Alt 140 = î
Alt 141 = ì
Alt 142 = Ä
Alt 143 = Å
Alt 144 = É
Alt 145 = æ
Alt 146 = Æ
Alt 147 = ô
Alt 148 = ö
Alt 149 = ò
Alt 150 = û
Alt 151 = ù
Alt 152 = ÿ
Alt 153 = Ö
Alt 154 = Ü
Alt 155 = ø
Alt 156 = £
Alt 157 = Ø
Alt 158 = ×
Alt 159 = ƒ
Alt 160 = á
Alt 161 = í
Alt 162 = ó
Alt 163 = ú
Alt 164 = ñ
Alt 165 = Ñ
Alt 166 = ª
Alt 167 = º
Alt 168 = ¿
Alt 169 = ®
Alt = 170 = ¬

There are more.

Og

 

[Darkniciad]

Just type the code from the table WH provided ( or another, similar one, as there are more symbols. I have about three different ones bookmarked ) directly into your text.

—

That displays as an em dash in both preview and final posting. Use that one all the time now to eliminate the double hyphen that usually comes through the text processor. You don't need to do anything special, just look up the code and replace the character with it in the text.

Note that there are a few things that will display properly in preview that don't come out in final posting -- the diamonds suit, for example. So, you can't always depend on the preview, though it's right more often than it's wrong.

 

[bb_peaks]

—

Thank you so much for that one. I use it frequently and it never shows up right.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Thanks for the replies.

I did try the &#xxx; codes and that didn't come out right in preview at all (I think because i'd picked some odder characters than normal and tried to use the codes in hexadecimal).

Funnily enough the characters on their own seemed to come out okay on preview anyway (should always try the simplest things first).

Hopefully it will turn out okay although I suspect I'm going to receive a lot of emails again asking why a character's name has a bunch of random question marks in it

 

[Weird Harold]

Thanks for the replies.

I did try the &#xxx; codes and that didn't come out right in preview at all (I think because i'd picked some odder characters than normal and tried to use the codes in hexadecimal).

Funnily enough the characters on their own seemed to come out okay on preview anyway (should always try the simplest things first).

Hopefully it will turn out okay although I suspect I'm going to receive a lot of emails again asking why a character's name has a bunch of random question marks in it

Did you use &#nnnn; or &Hhhhh; ?

The syntax for using hex numbers is slightly different than using decimal numbers.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Did you use &#nnnn; or &Hhhhh; ?

The syntax for using hex numbers is slightly different than using decimal numbers.

Ah, I think I rather foolishly used &#hhhh;

I've submitted the story, but I'll see how it comes out and resubmit if it's question marks all over the place.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Funnily enough, after all this, I just copied and pasted the text from Word into the preview window and the odd characters came out fine.

(I had more problems with the first draft being rejected because of a misunderstanding )

 

[Darkniciad]

You need a dadgum story link in your sig. Now I've got to go hunting *laugh*