As I don’t often use the Euro symbol, and also have a button on my keyboard which produces the Euro symbol anyway, changing this command wasn’t a problem. For example, the command I chose to represent the ‘upside-down ‘e’’ character was ctrl+alt+e, which was already assigned to the Euro symbol. If this symbol or function is one you use often, you should select a new keyboard shortcut. The programme will always show you if the command you have chosen is assigned to another symbol or function. If you click the button that says ‘shortcut key…’ you can enter a new keyboard command. However, for me, the number sequence and keyboard shortcut are not very memorable, and I want to use a shortcut containing the letter ‘e’ so that I can remember the symbol it produces. For example, if we went to insert this ‘upside-down ‘e’’ (known as schwa) the shortcuts which are automatically assigned are shown below:

To put in your own keyboard shortcuts (which will only work in Word on your own computer, and can be lost by using programmes such as CCleaner unless they are configured properly) go back to the symbol selection pane shown earlier. This might be enough help for students of German, but everyone else, read on. Many versions of Word have several memorable keyboard shortcuts automatically programmed in, such as hold ctrl+shift+colon button then click a, e, o, or u to produce that letter with umlauts. A much quicker method is to select your own keyboard shortcuts for symbols you use often. This can be a very lengthy process, especially if the symbols you need appear far apart in the symbol selection box and you keep forgetting where to find them. The standard method of doing this is Word is to use the insert symbols function, found here: This is a blog entry specifically designed to help Linguistics/English language students who need to write in IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), students of foreign languages who need to use special characters and any other students, such as those studying maths or science who regularly have to use symbols not from the Roman alphabet.

Shortcut keys for symbols in word