Why on Earth would anyone want to use special characters?

Well, look at the obvious. You may wish to do anything from write words in a language that utilizes special characters, such as thanking your friend in Germany by saying "Dankeschön" rather than "Dankeschoen". But how do you get the "o" to be topped by the umlaut character to produce "ö"? I usually light a small orange candle and dance around the keyboard chanting "umlaut, umlaut, umlaut" while hopping on one foot and wearing Lederhosen. This, however, is not often practical, especially in the heat of many messages coming in from ICQ (or your favorite instant message program-- AOL Instant Messenger, YAHOO! Pager, etc.).

Another, less practical use for special characters is to move smileys into a whole new realm… where you once smiled by using :-) and frowned using :-( you can give your textlife a facelift in new and fun ways. Some characters appear on the normal keyboard… but you also have a wealth of other characters encoded to be released by the use of your "Alt" key! The real key here is experimentation.

All of these faces are possible! So join me and my good friend Mr. Pirate
(__@__)
<ô¿ø>
~°~
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as we explore all the possibilities in a few common fonts…

AND NOW, ON TO THE FONTS!