Ever wondered how those companies adding that © or ® icon in their websites? These are the special characters which can be inserted into the text areas like any other characters on the keyboard. WordPress itself is a great tool for creating amazing content with ease. So, once you needed the help of the special characters in WordPress posts and wanted to know how to add special characters in WordPress posts, read further.
What are special characters
Special characters are characters that are available to be used in a document that are different from the letters, numbers, and symbols that we are familiar with. A great example for a common special character that we use in our daily life is the © character. Whenever we have to type something that is copyright protected, we use the special character ©. You can see it on almost all websites, mostly in the footer section. There are many special characters available to be used on WordPress.
Examples of special characters
| Special Character | Description |
|---|---|
| © | Copyright protected |
| ® | Registered trademark |
| ™ | Trademark |
| ° | Degree |
| µ | Micro |
Methods to add special characters to WordPress
There are multiple ways you can follow to add and use special characters on your WordPress powered website. Some of them are listed below.
1. Adding Special character using WordPress Visual Editor (old WordPress versions)
WordPress has a built-in visual editor which allows the users to create amazing web pages without coding. The Visual editor also comprises a button that allows you to add special characters in any place in your posts. This is what I am talking about
This button brings a window like this.
It includes almost all special characters which also consist of the one you wanted to add. Simply select the one which you want to add to any place of your posts, and it will add it to the selected place as a character. This is the simplest way to add special characters to the WordPress posts using the visual editor.
2. Adding Special Characters Using Unicode HTML Entities
The WordPress editor also has another section next to the visual editor namely text editor where you can edit the HTML code of your web page. Each character has an HTML entity number assigned to it. So, you can add any of the characters using their HTML entities. The HTML entities are very similar to the real names of those characters, thus making it very easy to remember. Some examples of the HTML entities are given below:
- © = ©
- ™ = ™
- ® = ®
- € = €
To find out the full list of the HTML entities, check out this character entity reference chart by W3.org website. You can use any one of the hundreds of codes in your text editor to add it to your web pages.
3. Using the Insert Special Characters plugin
There is a plugin available with the name Insert Special Characters. You can install the plugin and start using it to add special characters into your posts. This will add a special character symbol to the default paragraph block toolbar. You can click on it and search for the special character to be added.