All letters and numbers, and many commonly used symbols and punctuation marks, can be accessed through a dedicated keyboard key or by pressing "Shift" in conjunction with another key. If you want to insert a special character, however, you must take a few additional steps to track down the appropriate code. After you understand these steps, inserting characters such as the degree symbol using the Arial font becomes a quick task on Windows and Macintosh OS X computers.

Click the Windows "Start" button, followed by "All Programs," "Accessories," "System Tools" and "Character Map."

Click the "Font" drop-down menu and select "Arial."

Click the "Character set" drop-down menu and select "Unicode."

  • All letters and numbers, and many commonly used symbols and punctuation marks, can be accessed through a dedicated keyboard key or by pressing "Shift" in conjunction with another key.
  • Click the "Character set" drop-down menu and select "Unicode."

Enter "00B0" (without quotation marks) in the adjacent "Go to Unicode" field. The degree symbol appears at the top-left corner of the Character Map window.

Double-click the degree symbol character and click the "Copy" button.

Open the document where you want the degree symbol inserted, right-click at the insertion point and select "Paste."

  • Double-click the degree symbol character and click the "Copy" button.
  • Open the document where you want the degree symbol inserted, right-click at the insertion point and select "Paste."

Open the document where you want the degree symbol inserted.

Click at the insertion point and then select "Arial" from the program's Font menu.

Press and hold the "Shift," "Option" and "8" keys simultaneously.

Release all three keys. The degree sign appears in Arial immediately.