The ash, or ae ligature, i.e. Æ & æ. What can I say? I love it. I’m an ash-man. It’s elegant. It’s attractive. It’s cool. And alt+0198 or alt+0230 will get you what you need.
So what if we’ll have to remember that ægis is pronounced ee-gis rather than a-gis? No big whoop.
If I weren’t so lazy, I’d start a movement. ::sigh::
Thank you for your time.
The ash rocks, man! The ash and the schwa for LIFE! [/dorky linguistics major]
Well, I’ve always made it a point to spell Encyclopædia Britannica correctly, (one T, two Ns).
Hmmm… How might I go about typing one of these “ae ligatures”?
hey, I didn’t know it was called an ash! That’s interesting 
And by the way, it’s also the 27th letter in the danish alphabet (if you include w) - pronounced ä (as a umlaut).
Kythereia: what is a schwa?
Assuming you are on a PC, hold down the alt key while typing 0198 or 0230 on the numeric keypad. (as mentioned in the OP)
Æ æ There, I feel quite effete now. Where might one find the guide to all of these codes? I get annoyed not being able to put a pretentiously inappropriate umlaut over my heavy metal band name.
YES! YES! A thousand times YES!
We also should start using ø ß þ and (especially) Ώ. 'Cause omega is cool.
Represented by IPA upside-down “e”, X-SAMPA /@/. The vowel sound in “pun” or “shun” (well, the schwa is similar to them. I think those particular vowel sounds are /3/ or /@/ or something like that.)
Your computer may or may not have a character map—my folks’ computer doesn’t have it installed. But it is easier to google for a printable character map. For example, I think I have this one next to my desktop at work.
I can’t find a schwa on it. BTW, I’ve always seen the pronunciation (sp?) of the schwa as an “indistinct vowel” or something like that. It’s the little “uh” that goes into a lot of syllables. “Cable” may be pronounced “kay-bul,” but instead of a “u” I’d put a schwa if I knew how to do one. Or I could look on dictionary.com to get: “A mid-central neutral vowel, typically occurring in unstressed syllables, as the final vowel of English sofa.”
Happy happy - I always use æ in handwriting and now I know how to do it on a keyboard too. Thanks.
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure that everyone else in the U.K. uses it too, so you might want to come and live here.
Awesome. Yet another writing dæmon banished. I’d love to live in the UK. But it’s just too expensive.
I’m afraid you are slightly mistaken on that: I definately want to go live in the U.K. Unfortunately, there is no way I could reasonably negotiate the Byzantine immigration laws that govern the flow of people. Bummer.
Archæology! Dæmons! Lignum vitæ! Bædeker! (what is a Bædeker, anyway?) Hurrah!
Failing a character map (and assuming you have Firefox), you can download this nifty extension to use whatever character you wish.
ÆŜĮŔØŇ
“Bædeker” is short for Bædeker Guides, a series of travel guides originally published in the 1850s as tourist instructions aimed at the customers of the newly established railroads through Europe. They described tours and interesting spots to visit while following various rail lines. (Michelin followed in the tradition, changing the conveyance from the railroad to the car and highway in the early 1900s.)
During WWII, the Brits referred to many of their air attacks as “Bædekers” because they gave the Bomber Command the grand tour of Europe.
I’m pretty sure my 1930 edition of the Bædecker guide to London spells its title as “Baedecker”. Have to check when I get home.
It’s a great guide, with lots of useful tips for the traveller, such as whether English etiquette says that a gentleman should raise his hat for a lady in an elevator or not. (The correct answer is “not”.)
And my keyboard has an æ-key. Ædabædda!!! 
(= a Norwegian expression of glee)
I know, when I was a kid I too fell under the spell of Æ just because it looked so odd. I looked up Æ in the encyclopdedia and found that an Irish poet named George Russell signed his name that way. Which led to James Joyce’s little joke in Ulysses when Stephen borrows a fiver off of Russell and then says:
One-third of the appeal of the Mediæval Bæbes is their music, another third is that they’re cute, sexy females, and the other third is that spelling with the æ.
The symbol doesn’t work for me when I do alt + whatever. Woe.
Schwa is also a native’s name for Oshawa 
But yes, it’s a reduced vowel (think the last vowel in “sofa” or “roses”).
And mine does too!! Hæhæhæ 
And by the way, thank guys for explaining “schwa”
Just a nit pick: if you want to use “æ”, then shouldn’t you spell its name the Anglo-Saxon way, i.e. “æsh”? (I wouldn’t want to insist on changing the spelling of the consonant, too, to “æsc” – that would be going just a bit too far