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Piggies asks: QuestionIn programmes such as mail and pages, is it possible to assign user defined text to a hot key or key board short cut? For example, each time I have to insert TM I have to go through the edit menu, into special characters and then find it. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks AnswerThere’s no built-in functionality in OS X to do as you wish, per se, but there are commercial and shareware apps like Spell Catcher and TypeIt4Me that do as such. That said, you don’t really need those for what you’re trying to do. In System Preferences, go into International and Input Menu. Enable Keyboard Viewer, and you’ll get a menu item on your menu bar that allows you to see a virtual keyboard on your screen. Select “Show Keyboard Viewer” from this menu, and you can play around and find out how to quickly and easily type these characters. The ™ you are looking for can be typed as option-2. I use option-8 frequently for bullets, and option-5 for the infinity elipse to force funny sorting of folders on my desktop.
About JC
 Author Biography JC is a former Mac Genius and Mac-centric IT worker with a background in print advertising. He earned a reputation as a miracle worker when he saved the day at a new business pitch with the arcane knowledge that Apple’s ADB cables were nothing more than poorly shielded S-Video cables. JC runs the Heroic Efforts Data Recovery Service and writes Ungenius, a tawdry tale of the life and times of a former Mac Genius. You can contact JC via IM or via the contact form. |
Thanks for the great tip.
Much simpler than opening a blank TextEdit documents, and mashing the keyboard for 10 minutes until you stumble upon the character you want!
Matias makes their keyboards with these Option and Shift+Option characters printed on the actual keys themselves for easy reference. I now have almost every Option and Shift+Option character memorised thanks to my Tactile Pro. Obviously not a solution for notebook users, but if you have a desktop Mac, get yourself one of those keyboards and you’ll memorise them in no time, and never have to look anything up or hunt-and-peck when on your notebook.