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Type Exotic Characters on Mac

In addition to all the letters and symbols you see on your keyboard, you’d be surprised at the bewildering array of special characters you can type on your Mac. 

You may already be familiar with typing accents such as for café (in which case you type either Option+E then E again or, on OS X 10.7 or later, hold down the E until you get extra options) but you’ll find there are many, many more.

Go to the Edit menu of most apps and you'll see Special Characters at the bottom. This panel gives you access to a huge range of symbols you can drag into your documents. 

Not all apps or operating systems support them, but these are mostly part of the cross-platform Unicode standard. There are probably more than you see at first, too; click the cog to reveal more.

Emoji (those fun, colourful characters available in OS X 10.7 or later) are a notable exception to this cross-platform world. They're not Apple-only, but your recipient might not be able to see them.

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