Tip #30: Use Wikipedia to find rare characters instead of using the Character Map

The Character Map hasn't changed much since
it was introduced.

From time to time we occassionally need to type a seldom-used character which is not on our keyboard, be it Greek letters such as alpha α, beta β, omega Ω for maths, or some weird symbols or letters for wonderful screen names like ––––•(-• ¥øµr ¯|¯îÞ Jã® •-)•–––– to put on MSN. The usual drill would be: go to the Character Map in Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools, look for the character you want and then copy and paste it whereever you need it.

But browsing through the grid of characters is quite a pain for the eye, and sometimes you might end up not finding what you need. There is a simpler way than torturing your eyes with the Character Map, and this is when Wikipedia comes to the rescue! Wikipedia has articles for so many things, they have individual articles for symbols like the therefore sign ∴ and even every single letter in the Roman alphabet.

To use Wikipedia as an alternative to the Character Map:

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the search box, type the name of the symbol or character, and click Go.
   Example: to find the "subset or equal set" symbol ⊆ used in maths, type "subset".
3. Look for the symbol you want in selectable text form (i.e. not an image), select and copy.
4. Paste it where you need it.

Just be careful that what you're selecting is actually text and not an image. To verify, you can try right clicking on it and see if the option to Save Image is available.