How do I insert a UK Sterling sign in a post?

[awemawson]

I'm sure that I used to be able to put a UK sterling sign in a post, now I have to resort to "UKP" or other artifices.

This is what a pound Sterling sign ends up as:   ?

[AdeV]

I'm sure that I used to be able to put a UK sterling sign in a post, now I have to resort to "UKP" or other artifices.

This is what a pound Sterling sign ends up as:   ?

? <-- testing

Hmm... weirdness. I can only wonder if the server is set up to use 7-bit characters, as the pound sign is part of the standard (8-bit) ascii table.

? <-- more testing (that was a Euro symbol)

? <- A copyright symbol

~ <- A tilde (ascii 126)


Yep, I'm going to call it - the server is using just the basic ASCII codes, not the extended ASCII set.  Probably a server config option.

[Muzzerboy]

If you are using Windows, press the Windows button and the "." at the same time. Select the symbols section and click the pound symbol - this inserts the ? where the cursor was. Sounds like a real faff but is actually quite quick.

None of the "standard" methods seem to work here, as noted. Nothing's easy!

[sorveltaja]

Testing ? $ ? @ ?

edit: in message preview they look like they're supposed to.

[awemawson]

If you are using Windows, press the Windows button and the "." at the same time. Select the symbols section and click the pound symbol - this inserts the ? where the cursor was. Sounds like a real faff but is actually quite quick.

None of the "standard" methods seem to work here, as noted. Nothing's easy!

No Sterling sign in the table that comes up for me doing that although there are three pages of various symbols

[timby]

  Strange it changes to  :????   


































































































































?????

[AdeV]

  Strange it changes to  :????   

Standard practice on 7-bit charsets: Any unexpected character (i.e. in the decimal range 128-255) is converted to a (7-bit) "?".

In fact, it's probably not the server that's at fault, as "preview" shows the pound symbol (which involves a round-trip to the server); but the database. The DB will likely be set to the ASCII codepage (which only accepts characters 0-127/0x00-0x7F). Changing it to latin1 would help, but utf16 would be better...

[Muzzerboy]

No Sterling sign in the table that comes up for me doing that although there are three pages of various symbols

You need to select the "symbols" symbol (second from right on the top row), which narrows it down by eliminating emojis, gifs etc. You can then further narrow it down if needed by selecting "currency" if needed. But the sterling symbol is at or near the front of the symbols list anyway.

[awemawson]

Nope - I see Dollar sign, copyright sign and many others but no Sterling sign

Is it perhaps a Windows version sensitive thing, I'm running Windows 10 Pro ?

[Muzzerboy]

That's a partial explanation. On my two W11 machines, it works as per my description - but on my Lenovo W10 laptop it differs. I don't have a printscreen button on that one and if I try to use the snipping tool the popup disappears, doh. Either way, the emojis etc window appears when pressing Windows and "." but it looks different.

There's now only 3 symbols at the top of the popup - emojis, kaomojis and symbols. The symbols are filtered down by clicking on a capital Omega Ω - but you still have a lot of symbols left. The bottom row of the symbols displayed is another filter, although that's not obvs. The 3rd from the left on that bottom row is a dollar sign $ naturally and this filters out the currency symbols including the ? sign. Once you've done this, the ? symbol will appear in the "recently used" list.

Don't forget - nothing is easy.