How to type special characters on your Chromebook

I recently purchased a Chromebook, and one of the first things I realized once I started it up was that I had no idea how to type special characters with it.

I did a bit of research, and I discovered that the trick is using the Unicode for each character. Just type Ctrl+Shift+u at the same time, release them, type in the 4-character unicode, then press the space bar.

Watch the video below to see it in action:

Here is a table showing the characters I typed in the video:

Character nameSymbolUnicode
em dash2014
en dash2013
left single quote2018
right single quote2019
left double quote201C
right double quote201D
degree symbol°00B0
cent sign¢00A2

Visit How to properly type 8 popular punctuation marks to see how to type them on a Mac or a PC.

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By Kim Siever

I am a copywriter and copyeditor. I blog on writing and social media tips mostly, but I sometimes throw in my thoughts about running a small business. Follow me on Twitter at @hotpepper.

6 comments

  1. Really well explained and really useful ‘super-nerd’ info. :-)

    Very much appreciated!

    Cheers.

    Dave_A

  2. Hi Kim! I struggled with this as well and found another solution that is even easier.
    Select the US International keyboard and you can simply combine the accents with the letters
    just combine ‘”`~² with the letters, for example éë?èê
    you also get the cedille with ‘+c = ç

    cheers

    1. and you get the single special characters typing the character (nothing appears) and then hitting spacebar.
      cent sign and degree symbol as well as em dash seem not to exist though.

    2. That’s a great tip, Jorim! I will check that out. :)

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