# How do I use Windows to get the same symbols Macs give me with ALT **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 29, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763 "2005-04-29T19:05:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763/1 "2005-04-29T19:05:25Z")
I’m not a regular Mac user, so the following discovery has come as something of a surprise to me. If I hold ALT and type: 1234567890-=qwertyuiop\asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./ !@#$%^&\*()\_+QWERTYUIOP{}|ASDFGHJKL:"ZXCVBNM\<\>? what I get is: ¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–≠œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘«åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æΩ≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷ ⁄€‹›fifl‡°·‚—±Œ„´‰ˇÁ¨ˆØ∏”’»ÅÍÎÏ˝ÓÔÒÚƸ˛Ç◊ı˜Â¯˘¿ My question is, is there an equally easy way to produce all those symbols on a Windows PC? ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763/2 "2005-04-29T19:06:55Z")
I’ve got a chart on my website. Go to: [www.1728.com/altchar.htm](http://www.1728.com/altchar.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763/3 "2005-04-29T19:08:21Z")
“Character Map.” For me, it’s Start\>Programs\>Accessories\>System Tools. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763/4 "2005-04-29T19:09:55Z")
Or start-\>run and type ‘charmap’. [Here’s a useful page](http://home.earthlink.net/~awinkelried/keyboard_shortcuts.html) ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2005, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763/5 "2005-04-30T05:51:00Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > Or start-\>run and type ‘charmap’. > [Here’s a useful page](http://home.earthlink.net/~awinkelried/keyboard_shortcuts.html) One thing I’ve been wondering about is whether they use the same upper unicode map. When I type “æ”, do Windows and Linux users see the a-e dipthong or something else? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763/6 "2005-05-01T04:54:45Z")
Under Unicode, we see what you see on a Windows PC. Back in the bad old days of pre-Unicode upper ASCII, though, you might type Alt -keypad something, keypad-something, keypad-something to generate a symbol such as ™ or ? and on my Mac I might see æ or ¢ or something. And vice versa. Nowadays most of the remaining cross-platform incompatibility is when people type in Word and copy and paste from it into a web browser such as one of these posting boxes. (I have no idea why, but if the person who did that is on a Windows PC and you view the results on a Mac, you’ll often see apostrophes replaced with commas, quotation marks with «those baseline quotation marks», and other oddball symbols interspersed. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-use-windows-to-get-the-same-symbols-macs-give-me-with-alt/301763/7 "2005-05-01T11:19:51Z")
Not sure but I think that æ is a “ligature”, meaning a tying together of characters as a single typeset character, whereas a “dipthong” is sort of a spelling phenomenon (of which “ae” is an example). So, a ligature is one way of printing a dipthong. Also, for some strange reason, the first letter doesn’t count, so for example “oestrus” starts with an “e” for alphabetizing purposes. Anybody here know more about this, or able to straighten me out at least? I’ve always wondered about it.