Alpha Word Code Mode On

Alpha Word Code Mode On

If the alpha technique turns it into a Greek alpha in Word, then you change to unicode mode on your computer and type the unicode 0302 to get a circumflex above the last letter (or 0304 for a macron).

This has led me to apply what I like to call agile shortcuts basically, Ill write down the equation in my own handwriting, take a picture of it, and then use a paint program to crop and clean up my equation before inserting it into my document.

This works nicely, and even though some people might think its a kludge, I kind of like the ability to retain the personality of my own handwriting in my technical documents.

UNTIL THIS MORNING when I really, really, really wanted to be able to use y-bar and p-hat in my paragraph, without having to do the even kludgier thing where you just call them y-bar and p-hat in the text.

But turns out, it DOES have this very useful capability called combining diacritics and heres how you can use it to type characters with their own hats and bars on them.

To the right of the text area labeled Character code: type in 0302.

Going further right, theres a dropdown that says from: and youll want to make sure that you see Unicode (hex) selected in that box.

To the right of the text area labeled Character code: type in 0305.

The cursor has to be to the right of the letter to be correctly positioned.

Type a letter, then go to Symbol, In Font, select Arial, and choose Combining Diacritical Marks in Subject.

Type 0304 for lower case, and 0305 for upper case and insert it.

Copy it (both letter and bar) and paste it as text ( A in Word and 123 in Excel).

If need more bars on top, inert bar twice, you double bars on top, and so on.

For Greek letters sigma produces, while Sigma produces.

In all of these cases, do NOT type the quotes.) Click on File Options Proofing AutoCorrect Options Math AutoCorrect Check the box next to Use Math AutoCorrect rules outside of math regions This allows you to use these math and symbol typing short-cuts outside of the equation tool (a little mini-window within your document for equations).

You can find a list of typing shortcuts here: Or, if you have an equation tool open, you can hover your cursor over the symbol and the name of the symbol and any available typing shortcuts (e.g.

Infinity (infty)) will appear.

Not as intuitive to begin with as word, but once mastered produces fantastically amazing documents.

Definitely agree though, once you get over the LaTeX learning curve, theres no comparison.

I found its an easy solution on Word for Mac and hope its the same for previous versions: select Word from the menu and go to Preferences.

There is a list of about 100 math symbols that will be replaced automatically.

For example, typing Xbar will be replaced by an X with a bar on top.

Typing XBar will be replaced by an X with a double bar on top.

I can do ybar and qhat but unfortunately it does not work well for Greek symbols such as thetahat.

Alpha Word For Mac