What is the ¬ key for?

[Gill Bates]

Does anyone know what the ¬ key is for (it's to the left of the number 1
key). I've called the Microsoft helpdesk and they don't know. It's been the
cause of many an argument at work all day.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Does anyone know what the ¬ key is for (it's to the left of the
number 1 key). I've called the Microsoft helpdesk and they don't
know. It's been the cause of many an argument at work all day.

First of all, I assume you have a UK keyboard, because that character
doesn't occur on US keyboards -- they have the tilde (~) in that position.
The page http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/keyboards.mspx is very
helpful in checking various keyboard layouts.

The ¬ character is listed in the Unicode standard as the mathematical 'not'
or 'negation' operator. Word uses it for conditional hyphens when
nonprinting characters are displayed
(http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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