There are several ways you can put special characters into your chat, or any document under Microsoft Windows.  Obviously, the easiest way is to copy it from somewhere and paste it in.  But where do you copy it from?

There is a little-known tool called the Character Map which you can use (see Start/Programs/Accessories on your Taskbar) , or you can use what we call "ALT+" codes.  For example, suppose you want to spell [my favourite word] Nescafé ... to produce the "e acute" you hold down the ALT key on the keyboard, then type 0233 from the numeric keypad  (not the row of numbers above "QWERTY..." ), then release the ALT key and the letter appears.

The table below lists the printable characters and their corresponding ALT+codes: