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In OS X
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Beyond the standard characters in OS X there are many symbols, greek letters, math symbols, and dingbats you can type, but it can be confusing on how to actually type them.
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OS X has some built in tools that can help.
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We can also learn some keyboard shortcuts for the more common ones we might need.
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Accented characters
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Or diacritical marks. Marks that appear above or below a letter, or in some other position and indicate which sound to give to a letter unit
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Use the option key and the press the key for the mark you want to use, then type the character you want the mark on
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Option+e will give you an accent mark
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Option+i a circumflex mark
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Option+n a tilde
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Option+u a trema (umlaut)
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Option + ` a grave mark
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More 'options'
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It can be hard to remember what marks are hidden behind what keys on the keyboard
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You can enable the Keyboard viewer to help.
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System Preferences --> Language & Text --> Input Sources tab
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Check on the Keyboard & Character Viewer. Adds a menubar item
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Click that and select Show Keyboard Viewer.
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Hold the option key down and you'll see the diacritical mark keys highlighted in orange
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You also notice the keys change to show other common symbols and characters you may use on a regular basis
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Some common ones I find useful:
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These will vary based on your language settings, but of r my US keyboard.
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Ellipsis: Option + ;
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Bullet: Option + 8
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Cents: Option + 4 (Option+ 3 for £ and Option+Shift+2 for Euro)
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"Smart quotes": Option+[ and Option+Shift+[ (double) and Option+] and Option+Shift+] (single)
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Option+2 for trademark and Option+G for copyright.
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Option+Shift+8 or Option+k for degrees
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Option+Shift+K for the Apple logo.
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Math symbols too
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Option+= for "not equal"
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Option+< or Option+> for less than or equal and greater than and equal
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Option+v for square root and Option+5 for infinity
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Symbols galore
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Using the 'Character Viewer' you can gain access to just about every symbol, character, and dingbat under the sun
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Once you enabled the menu bar item as described before just choose "Show Character Viewer' to display the palette
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They are divided into categories like Math, Arrows, currency symbols, miscellaneous, etc.
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It will also show you font collections containing those symbols.
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With the insertion point in your document you can double-click the character from the viewer to insert it into your document
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You can also drag the character from the palette or click the 'Insert' button at the bottom.
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Clicking the 'Cog' options icon at the lower left you can build out the 'Favorites' tab with common characters you may use.
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If you don't like having the Keyboard & Character viewer in the menu bar you can also access the Character Viewer via the 'Edit' menu in most applications
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Edit-->Show Special Characters…
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Using OS X's text replacement
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System Preferences --> Language & Text --> Text tab
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Turn on Symbol and text substitution by checking the ones you want in the list.
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Typing '( c )' will substitute the copyright symbol. 1/4 can substitute the quarter symbol. Does seem to work in all apps.
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This tab also lets you change the default settings for smart quote replacement.
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Software to help
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Text Expander accented character clipping group. Automatically add the right marks for "crème brûlée"
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PopChar X offers a more advanced version of Apple's built in Character Viewer Palette
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In iOS
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Several enhancements you can turn on to make typing quicker in iOS
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Settings-->General-->Keyboard
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Turn on "Auto-capitalization", "Auto-correction", "Check spelling", "Enable Caps Lock" and "'.' Shortcut.
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Cap Locks allows you to double-tap the shift key to enable a caps lock
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The "." shortcut allows you to double tap the spacebar to quickly insert a period and space.
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Auto-correct will automatically add punctuation to words like "can't"
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Shortcuts
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Several keys have alternate characters.
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Click and hold on a key to see it's alternate options.
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Slide your finger up to choose the character you want and then release.
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Slide finger off a key to cancel typing it.
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Some have defaults you can access by simply flicking upward on the key. Exclamation --> single quote, Question mark --> Double-quotes.
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Dot com
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In Safari holding the .com key will offer alternative endings. In Mail addresses it's the "." key.
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.net, .edu, .org, .us
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Emoji
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The Japanese iOS has support for more expressive graphical icons called 'Emoji'
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You can find apps to enable tis on the App Store. Launch the app can reboot the device
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General-->Keyboards-->International. Add Keyboard and select 'Emoji'
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Now you will have a 'globe' icon on the keyboard
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Tap the globe to toggle to the 'Emoji' keyboard
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Systems will need to have support for the Emoji unicode font to see that characters.
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Supposedly OS X 10.7 Lion has Apple's Emoji font support in Font Book
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