Insert ASCII or Unicode Latin-based symbols and characters (2024)

FAQs

Insert ASCII or Unicode Latin-based symbols and characters? ›

Inserting ASCII characters

On a standard 101 keyboard, special extended ASCII characters such as é or ß can be typed by holding the ALT key and typing the corresponding 4 digit ASCII code. For example é is typed by holding the ALT key and typing 0233 on the keypad.

Unicode is the universal character encoding used to process, store and facilitate the interchange of text data in any language while ASCII is used for the representation of text such as symbols, letters, digits, etc. in computers. ASCII : It is a character encoding standard for electronic communication.

Unicode characters can then be entered by holding down Alt , and typing + on the numeric keypad, followed by the hexadecimal code, and then releasing Alt . This may not work for 5-digit hexadecimal codes like U+1F937 .

Unicode supports more than a million code points, which are written with a "U" followed by a plus sign and the number in hex; for example, the word "Hello" is written U+0048 U+0065 U+006C U+006C U+006F (see hex chart).

The interesting thing over here is that the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a subset of the UNICODE (Universal Coded Character Set) encoding standard. Therefore there is not any need to convert ASCII to UNICODE as we have same values representing the characters in ASCII and UNICODE.

For example, lowercase i would be represented in the ASCII encoding by binary 1101001 = hexadecimal 69 (i is the ninth letter) = decimal 105. Despite being an American standard, ASCII does not have a code point for the cent (¢).

Here are few methods in different programming languages to print ASCII value of a given character : Python code using ord function : ord() : It converts the given string of length one, returns an integer representing the Unicode code point of the character. For example, ord('a') returns the integer 97.

An ASCII keyboard is a keyboard that outputs codes in the ASCII standard character set. (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) ASCII keyboards were often off-the-shelf parts for embedding into computer systems, often producing signals at chip-compatible levels over seven parallel signal lines.

What are Unicode characters or symbols? ›

Unicode is a universal character encoding standard. This standard includes roughly 100000 characters to represent characters of different languages. While ASCII uses only 1 byte the Unicode uses 4 bytes to represent characters. Hence, it provides a very wide variety of encoding.

Inserting Unicode Characters

Type the character code where you want to insert the Unicode symbol. Press ALT+X to convert the code to the symbol. If you're placing your Unicode character immediately after another character, select just the code before pressing ALT+X.

ASCII value of uppercase alphabets – 65 to 90. ASCII value of lowercase alphabets – 97 to 122.

If you are trying to find a specific character in the Unicode Standard, the first place to go is the code charts. The code charts are organized into blocks, which are groupings of related characters.

In Microsoft Word (but not other Office applications), you can enter Unicode characters directly from the keyboard by typing their number followed by ALT + X. By convention, ALT + X means to hold the ALT key down while hitting the X key.

Use the right-hand Alt key in combination with the appropriate letter to get one of the more common combinations (for example, Alt+e will result in: é). Press the symbol you want to use and then the letter you want to use it with (for example, if you first press the ~ symbol and then the “n” key, you'll get: ñ).

Use the Number Pad to Create Keyboard Symbols

Using the number pad on a Windows computer lets you use the ANSI code for special characters and symbols. Press Alt + [the number code for the symbol or accented letter]. For example, Alt + 1 inserts ☺, while Alt + 0153 inserts the trademark ™.

The Character Map program is used for entering Unicode characters into any application. This program's option another name is charmap. It is an inbuilt tool in the MS-Window operating system. This operating system enables the user to view the characters present in the selected font.