Word Symbols

[VS in Atlanta]

Did you know?
When you want to type characters that are not on the keyboard, Word has a
function called 'insert symbols.' Guess what? I looked for a simple division
sign. You would expect to find it under 'mathematical operators?' Think
again. The only division sign you will find is the slash. So when my kids
grow up and see a division sign, they will not know what it is. For that
matter there is no multiplication sign either. Once again, my kids will only
associate the star with a multiplication sign. Why, why, why are we letting
Microsoft make our kids dunces? They charge an arm and a leg for software
and what do you get in return? English that would make our English speaking
ancestors turn in their graves?

 

[Terry Farrell]

Twaddle. There is a standard division sign ÷ in nearly every standard font
set. If you cannot find it, try Alt+0247 (entered on the numeric keypad).

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Both ÷ and ×are present in almost every font, but I can attest that they can
be devilishly hard to spot in the Symbol dialog. They are not in the
Mathematical Operators character subset because they are part of the Latin-1
subset that is present in even older fonts that have characters only up to
255. The Unicode character codes for them are 00F7 and 00D7; ASCII 247 and
215.

I have assigned keyboard shortcuts to both: Ctrl+Alt+X for × and Ctrl+:, -
(that is, Ctrl+colon, hyphen) for ÷.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org