Typing weird symbols

1 Needful characters

How I input characters not visible on my keyboard varies by platform.

NB Windows is, AFAICT, simply taking the piss here. Straight and curly quotes are entered by numerical codes. I could possibly define better custom shortcuts using PowerToys Keyboard Manager utility. Or automate it away using typographical macros. Or edit the document in question from some other OS, which TBH seems like the best option. What the hell, Windows? Are you in the service of the Illuminascii?

On macOS, there is a helpful character palette which appears if I type ^-⌘-Space. NB the default characters it searches over for me are not useful. I recommend configuring it to contain more useful characters.

2 Compose keys on X Windows

Bonus time: Where is that compose key?

Using Ubuntu? The traditional instructions about compose keys don’t work per default on recent versions.

You can re-enable Compose using gnome-tweaks:

sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

Then launch Tweaks

1. Go to Keyboard & Mouse.
2. Choose something other than disabled for the Compose Key option.

I set Compose to be Capslock because, like hundreds of millions of computer users, I have never pressed that key deliberately to obtain capital letters in my whole life and it seems unlikely that this will change in the coming decades.¹

Putting this all together means that e.g. I now type ü as Capslock+" u and “ as Capslock + < ". Which is reasonably mnemonic if you look at a US keyboard layout. Bonus: disables caps lock.

As of the last few days, my computer starts forgetting the compose key settings when it wakes from sleep. Putting the following command in the X11 start-up apps list does the job:

setxkbmap -option compose:caps

Now I can treat myself to a caret.

xmodmap -e "clear Lock"

You can alternatively (additionally?) enable ISO_Level3_Shift which does a similar thing AFAICT but with less configurability and less documentation online

Launch GNOME Tweaks

1. Go to Keyboard & Mouse
2. Click on Additional Layout Options
3. Expand Miscellaneous compatibility options, check Enable extra typographic characters

It is not clear to me how I enter Greek characters using either of the above methods. There is something called a dead_greek key? Is that real?

Or I could memorise some 4-digit unicode code points and enter characters via Ctrl-Shift-U. That would be a great use of my brief and precious time on this sweet, sweet planet.

But which Compose shortcuts exist? There is no canonical list and you kinda need to guess what happens on your local computer might vary. The Gtk list is a good start. There is an encyclopedia of these symbols at fsymbols.com, although only a subset of the shortcuts listed there work on my config. And you can, hypothetically, define your own. The wikipedia list has the most common examples. The local version is supposedly in a file like /usr/share/X11/locale/am_ET.UTF-8/Compose but for me this includes mostly Ethiopian input methods and not the basic stuff, so I give up for now.

Bonus time:

• Cross-platform way to enter Unicode characters
• Using Unicode on macOS

3 Emoji

See emoji.

4 Finding that weird character

There is a nifty web app which solves a lot of these problems for one, called tell.wtf. Give it a go. You can scribble a character and it tells you the unicode translation.

Similarly, shapecatcher lets you sketch it in the browser.

Unicode character search and Unilist and copybar all provide classic style search.

If you then need to encode it to code points or UL encoding or whatever, see the many web-friendly encodings in the amusing Cryptii app and r12a >> Unicode code converter.

5 Advanced character molestation

Combatwombat’s Lunicode.js is full of programmatic unicode mangling tricks, e.g.

Wonky alternatives to the usual characters.

చօղҟվ ąӀէҽɾղąէìѵҽʂ էօ էհҽ մʂմąӀ çհąɾąçէҽɾʂ.

One can play with it at Lunicode.com. Crucially, Lunicode supports Zalgo text, and various other stupid stunts from /r/Unicode/. (In fact, Zalgo text is a cottage industry.) I’m more of a trap text person myself, obvs.

qaz.wtf Unicode Text Converter gives us another menu of quaint text transformations.

6 Sources

• Smart Quotes for Smart People
• Additional fancy ways of getting characters in ubuntu
• Mac diacritics
• Jack Yan

7 Incoming

The Am Dash

For generations before generative text, writers have used the em dash to hop between thoughts, emotions, and ideas. Dickens shaped his morality tales with it, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness flowed through it, Kerouac let it drive his jazz-like prose. Today, Sally Rooney threads it through her quiet truths of the heart.

But this beloved punctuation mark has become a casualty of the algorithmic age. The em dash has been so widely adopted by AI-generated text that even when used by human hands, it begs the question: was this actually written or apathetically prompted?

The battle for the soul of writing is in full swing. And the human fightback starts here. With a new punctuation mark that serves as a symbol of real pondering, genuine daydreaming, and true editorial wordsmithery. Inspired by Descartes’ belief that thinking makes us human, the am dash is a small but powerful testament that the words you’ve painstakingly and poetically pulled together are unequivocally, certifiably, and delightfully your own.

We’re launching the am dash initially via two new, tailored typefaces: Times New Human and Areal, available to download and use alongside your custom fonts.