diacritical marks

[sarasvati]

Hello all, sorry if this has been covered before but I could not find
it listed. I have recently installed MS Office 2004 onto my mac and
cannot figure out how to use diacritical marks with it. I am writing an
academic paper which requires the use of - and ' or ` over some letters
and . under some, but I can't find any way to make two characters fit
simultaneously in the same space, nor can I find such symbols anywhere
else in the program. Please help?

 

[Bhagiratha]

I am assuming you are using a mac running OS X. If so, you can find
the utility for inputting diacritical marks via the System Preferences
panel --> International --> Input Menu.

From their, you will need to turn on "Character Palette"

I work with diacritical marks daily, so this program is what you will
need. You can find all the marks via this application.

Hope this helps you out.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello-

Do a search in Word Help for International Characters, click the first
listing that comes up re keyboard use.

HTH |:>)

 

[Bhagiratha]

No ... the search is not done within Word. You must navigate to the
System Preferences application which is also located via the dock.

 

[CyberTaz]

Not so - what you are referring to is the OS X Character Palette... Which is
certainly a viable (& perhaps preferable) option.

However, most of the international characters _are_ available by way of
keystroke as well as through Word's Insert>Symbol menu. What I suggested is
directly listed in Word's Help dialog. You might at least check it out
before deprecating my reply.

Regards |:>)

 

[Bhagiratha]

My apologies ... I thought I was responding to the poster of this
question. No dis-respect. a silly mistake. and yes, I know it can be
done right within word ... but in my own work experience, I prefer the
character palette.

 

[CyberTaz]

No Problem... And the Character Palette does give you quite a few more
options.

Regards |:>)

 

[sarasvati]

Hey all, thanks for the help...I found some of the characters I need in
Word/Insert/symbol, but not all of them. I looked in Character Palette,
but that requires you to pick a specific language, which I really can't
do...what I am trying to type is Roman alphabet renditions of Sanskrit
terms, which is not listed. Does anyone know which language might have
such marks? When I tried experimenting with them I just got blank boxes
for characters. What I need is - and ' over some letters and . over and
under some letters. In particular, the dot over and under letters was
giving me trouble, as I believe the other two are in Word's symbols.
Any further ideas?

 

[Bhagiratha]

Hey Sarasvati,

I wish there was a way to actually show you via screen shots, but
never-the-less ... I will try to further assist you. In the character
Palette main menu: choose "Roman" as the View source. from their you
select "A Latin" . from their you can just click on a letter and open
the pull-down next to "character Info" .... that would let u choose or
see what special characters u looking for. when You find what you
need, just add it to your favorites, so you wouldn't have to go through
the detail search all over again.

On a side note. I do editing for an author and part of my work is to
also render roman alphabets from the Sanskrit. you can see from this
example:
http://web.mac.com/bhagiratha/iWeb/Site/Photos.html

If I can be of further help, let me know.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I'm not sure you get what Sarasvati is after.

He wants to be able to add diacriticals to _any_ Roman letter. That means he
is looking for "decomposed" diacriticals, rather than "precomposed"
diacriticals that some European languages have (and were grudgingly added to
the Unicode protocol after the insistence of some of these European
countries, who had had precomposed varieties foe decades(,

Yes, the de-composed diacriticals are all in the Character Palette. He know
when you've found one since it starts with the term "COMBINING". You will
find all or most of them in the section "Combining Diacritical Marks" (using
Code Tables / Unicode) : 00000300-00000369. You insert it after typing the
letter it goes over.

For example, I'm going to type a "y" and then stick a COMBINIG GRAVE ACCENT
(0300) over it. This is not a letter you can find in pre-composed form
anywhere:

ỳ

See? Or even a nonsense combination:

ű

(That's a "u" plus a COMBINING DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT (030B)

Or

r̩

That's "r" with COMBINING VERTICAL LINE BELOW (0329).

It seems to know which letters can actually accept which diacriticals
(otherwise it puts them to the right rather than above or below).


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[sarasvati]

Bhagiratha,

Thank you so much for your help! I am really sorry, but here I am with
one more question. I did all that stuff you said, and I saw that there
were more things in the character palette, but there were still no
options for putting the little dots over and under letters. Do you know
what am I missing? BTW, if part of your job is editing the text you
posted, you have the greatest job ever--the paper I'm working on is an
honors thesis on Mbh 5:54:106.1-109.25. I'm hoping the paper turns out
to be good enough that I can get into a good grad school with it, so I
can study it in the original.

Thank you so much for your time!

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Bhagiratha,

Thank you so much for your help! I am really sorry, but here I am with
one more question. I did all that stuff you said, and I saw that there
were more things in the character palette, but there were still no
options for putting the little dots over and under letters. Do you know
what am I missing? BTW, if part of your job is editing the text you
posted, you have the greatest job ever--the paper I'm working on is an
honors thesis on Mbh 5:54:106.1-109.25. I'm hoping the paper turns out
to be good enough that I can get into a good grad school with it, so I
can study it in the original.

Thank you so much for your time!

Just read my last post. Character Palette 0300-0369.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Bhagiratha]

Hey Sarasvati

I understand what you are trying to do, but it doesn't reaally work
that way. You cannot "really" put the dots over or under the letters,
all that is already done for you within the character palette. All you
do is select the letter with the dot above or under and just double
click to insert it where you want to within your document. this is
pretty much how I get my work done.

If this is of any help, let me know.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Hey Sarasvati

I understand what you are trying to do, but it doesn't reaally work
that way. You cannot "really" put the dots over or under the letters,
all that is already done for you within the character palette. All you
do is select the letter with the dot above or under and just double
click to insert it where you want to within your document. this is
pretty much how I get my work done.

If this is of any help, let me know.

No, that's not true. You both keep ignoring my post, which tells you that
you CAN add diacritics to appropriate characters by inserting COMBINING
DIACRITICS 0300-0369 immediately after typing the character over or under
which you want to add the diacritic. Far, far more diacritics (namely, all)
are available this way than the precomposed character-plus-diacritic
combinations which only exist in certain commonly-found combinations found
in certain European languages, the ones you're talking about.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Sarasvati:

Please read Paul's post. There's two ways to do this: If you have fonts
that contain the combinations you want, you can enter the letters directly.
If not, you have to "make" them, as Paul described, by using the
deconstructed glyphs -- which are also in the Unicode character set. Enter
the base letter, and follow it immediately with the glyph for the diacritic
you require. The symbols are coded so the diacritic will appear in the
correct place.

Cheers

Bhagiratha,

Thank you so much for your help! I am really sorry, but here I am with
one more question. I did all that stuff you said, and I saw that there
were more things in the character palette, but there were still no
options for putting the little dots over and under letters. Do you know
what am I missing? BTW, if part of your job is editing the text you
posted, you have the greatest job ever--the paper I'm working on is an
honors thesis on Mbh 5:54:106.1-109.25. I'm hoping the paper turns out
to be good enough that I can get into a good grad school with it, so I
can study it in the original.

Thank you so much for your time!

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410