Special Characters Google Docs

Special characters are increasingly used in Google Docs for a number of different purposes like writing, coding, and mathematical operations.

Google Docs has an abundant number of built-in symbols, emojis, and punctuations that help you insert special characters into Google Docs easily.

Even though Google Docs has a library of special characters, inserting these special characters could be a tedious task. That’s why, in this article, I’ve covered what are all the available special characters list in Google Docs and how to insert special characters in the Google Docs document using different ways including keyboard shortcuts.

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Special Characters in Google Docs

Special characters in Google Docs have symbols and arrows.

• Symbols include special symbols emojis, punctuation, number, Format & Whitespace, modifier, Latin, other European scripts, American scrips, African scrips, middle eastern scripts, southeast Asian scripts, Hangul, Other east Asian scrips, Han-1 stroke radicals, Han-2 stroke radicals, Han-3 stroke radicals, Han-4 stroke radicals, Han-5 stroke radicals, Han-6 stroke radicals, Han-7 stroke radicals, Han-8 stroke radicals, Han-9 stroke radicals, Han-10 stroke radicals, Han-11-17.. stroke radicals, and Han-other. 

• Arrows include Braille, control pictures, currency, emoticons, game pieces, gender and genealogical, geometric shapes, keyboard and UI, Latin 1 supplement, maths, maths alphanumeric, miscellaneous, musical, stars/asterisks, subscripts, superscripts, technical, transport, and map, weather and astrological, Yijing/Tai Xuan Jing, historic and compatibility.

You can use different yet easy ways to insert special characters in Google Docs.

How to insert special characters?

There are six different ways you could try to insert special characters in Google Docs. Let’s see each of the below methods to insert special characters in detail.

• Insert special characters in Google Docs using the “Special Characters” menu
• Insert special characters in Google Docs using the “keyboard shortcut”
• Insert special characters in Google Docs if “unable to locate a certain character”
• Insert special characters in Google Docs using “Unicode Value”
• Insert special characters in Google Docs using “Automatic Substitution”
• Insert special characters in Google Docs using “Alt code shortcuts”?

How to insert special characters in Google Docs using “Special Characters” menu?

Follow the below steps to insert special characters in Google Docs.

Step 1: Open Google Docs and sign into your account.

Step 2: Open the existing document or a new blank document in which you want to insert special characters in Google Docs.

Step 3: Navigate to the menu mar and click “Insert” > “Special Characters”.

Step 4: A window pop up that has a table of various symbols. You can choose the desired special character from the table.

Note: You can either choose from the symbols or arrows based on your requirements. In the search bar, relevant symbols will be displayed.

How to insert special characters in Google Docs using “keyboard shortcuts”?

You can also open the “special characters window” using keyboard shortcuts and then insert your desired special characters in Google Docs.

• To do so, on your Windows, press “ Alt + I + C ” on your keyboard.
• If you use Google Docs on a Mac, then press “Ctrl + Option + I + C”.

How to insert special characters in Google Docs if “unable to locate a certain character”?

If you are not able to locate the special character with the filter menus or search box, then you can search for it by drawing it instead. Follow the below steps to insert special characters in Google Docs if unable to locate a certain character.

Step 1: Open the Google Docs document in which you want to insert a special character.

Step 2: Navigate to the menu bar and click on the “Insert” and then go for special characters from the list.

Step 3: In the blank box under the search bar, draw a rough sketch of the desired character. This will automatically filter the characters that closely match what you’ve drawn in the special characters window.

In this way, you can insert special characters in Google Docs.

How to insert special characters in Google Docs using “Unicode Value”?

Sometimes, you might want to insert a character very often but are tired of performing a rough sketch every time. In that case, you can use the “Unicode value” to insert a special character in Google Docs. To avoid the hassle of repeatedly searching for or drawing a special character, follow the below steps.

Step 1: On your Google Docs document, click Insert > Special characters.

Step 2: Once you filter the special character that you use more often, place the cursor over it. You can see the Unicode value in the format “U+xxxx”, below the character. Copy that Unicode value and paste it into the search bar when you need it.

Note: You can also just use the number omitting ‘U +’ for faster results.

Using this way, you can insert special characters that you use more often.

How to insert special characters in Google Docs using “Automatic Substitution”?

One more easy way to insert special characters in Google Docs is the “Automatic Substitution method”. This is a quick method yet requires a bit of work to set up. Below are the steps to follow for inserting special characters in Google Docs using the “Automatic Substitution method”.

Step 1: In your Google Docs document, click “Insert” > “Special characters”.

Step 2: From the list, insert the desired special character as you would normally do and copy that special character (press Ctrl + C or Cmd + C combo) to your clipboard.

Step 3: Now navigate to the menu bar and click “Tools” > “Preferences”

Step 4: On the “Substitution” tab, insert a single character or a combo of characters into the Replace box. This character or set of characters will be substituted by the special character whenever you type them into a document.

Step 5: Now, paste the special character (press Ctrl + V in Windows or Cmd + V combo in Mac) into the “With” box.

In this way, when you type the character and hit Space, the special character will be inserted.

How to insert special characters in Google Docs using “Alt code shortcuts”?

Google Docs also allows a special way to insert special characters using “Alt code shortcuts”. Here’s how to insert special characters in Google Docs using “Alt code shortcuts”.

• For Windows, you can insert most of the special characters by holding down the “Alt” key while punching in a code into the number pad. For example, hold down Alt and type the code, such as 248 which is the degree symbol
• On Mac, tuse the Option or the Option + Shift keys in conjunction with various alphanumeric keys to insert special characters. For example, press Option + G to press the copyright symbol.

Well, this is all about Special Characters Google Docs.

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• How To Make A Matrix In Google Docs

Voila! You’ve just learned how to insert hundreds of special characters in Google docs with ease. Try it now to create an awesome document.

Rajkishore Sahoo

I am Rajkishore, and I have over 14 years of experience in the Software Industry.  For a long time, I have been using Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Sheets for my document usage, and I am sharing all the tips and tricks, the challenges I have come across, and their solutions to use Google Docs for your day-to-day use. I hope you will learn from these practical Google Docs tutorials. Read more.