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Symbols and special characters that don't appear on your keyboard can be displayed on your screen and printed. For example, you can insert symbols such as ¼ and ©, special characters such as an em dash (—), ellipsis (…), or nonbreaking space (nonbreaking space: A space that's used to prevent multiple words from breaking if they fall at the end of a line. For example, you can prevent "Microsoft Office" from breaking; instead, the entire item moves to the beginning of the next line.), as well as many international characters such as Ç and ë.

You can insert symbols and characters by using the Symbol dialog box or shortcut keys. You can also use AutoCorrect to automatically replace text you type as symbols.

The types of symbols and characters you can insert depend on the available fonts. For example, some fonts may include fractions (¼), international characters (Ç, ë), and international monetary symbols (£, ¥). The built-in Symbol font includes arrows, bullets, and scientific symbols. You might also have additional symbol fonts, such as Wingdings, which include decorative symbols.

You can quickly insert a recently used symbol by clicking a symbol in the Recently used symbols list in the Symbol dialog box, and you can resize the Symbol dialog box so that you can view more symbols.