What are some good ways to include mathematical symbols and Greek letters in questions on Yahoo! Answers?

Question

I've seen quite a few people putting some mathematical symbols and Greek letters in both their questions and answers here on Yahoo Answers. I've been trying to find a way to do it. I just found one that will allow some to be entered. I go into MS Word; click on "Insert" in the tool bar at the top. Then, on the drop-down menu that results, click on "Symbol". This gives you a choice of lots of symbols and non-Roman letters like Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. So you insert those into an empty MS Word doc and then cut-and-paste them into the Answers question (or details) entry window. Here are examples: Ψ, φ, θ, λ, ∑, ∏, ∞, √, ∫, ∂, ∆.

Do you know of any other ways to do this? I'm especially interested in ways that will allow more symbols.

Answer 1

I just copy them from the character map in the system tools in the accessories.

Answer 2

If you know the ASCII code for the number, you can hold the ALT key down and then type in the 3-digit number using the numeric keypad. For example, the symbol pi is ASCII 227, so I hit ALT, keeping it held in, and enter 2-2-7 on the keyboard and I get π. Square root is 251, √ et cetera. A table of these can be found at http://www.cdrummond.qc.ca/cegep/informat/Professeurs/Alain/files/ascii.htm

If you search Wiki for "extended ASCII character set" you'll find a link to http://allchars.zwolnet.com/introduction.html which is a small applet that allows for easy character insertion. I have no tested this, but it seems to fit your requirements.

Good Luck!

(Props to user EricEwanco for help finding the table that eluded even myself)

Answer 3

Another way is to open another window and go to a webpage that shows special math characters in html. One such page is

http://tunes.org/wiki/HTML_special_characters_and_symbols

From there you can copy any character you need and paste it here. Characters from the page mentioned are ¢ £ ° ± ¹ ² ³ · × ÷ ¼ ½ ¾ ← ↑ → ↓ ↔ ∀ ∂ ∃ ∈ ∋ ∏ ∑ − √ ∝ ∞ ∠ ∧ ∨ ∩ ∪ ∫ ∴ ∼ ≈ ≠ ≡ ≤ ≥ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇ ⊥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ , as well as all upper and lower case Greek letters.

Answer 4

if you cant find symbols then use words like that everyone will know what symbol you are talking about