Writing your language with Microsoft Word

 

Introduction

 

     Microsoft Word is quickly becoming one of the most widely used word processing programs today.  However, as many of you are well aware, representing an indigenous language in a word document still remains a daunting challenge.  Why is this?  A common fact is that most indigenous languages in the Americas possess their own unique set of sounds that often require a unique set of characters to represent them.  This is coupled with the fact that “font” makers, or those people who make character sets for others, simply don’t take into account the character needs of small minority languages.  

 

Unicode

 

     This is where “Unicode” comes in. 

     Unicode is a system of encoding that allows the representation of a text in a word document.  For example, take a look below at the following two letters.

 

     [ƛ]  [Ł]

 

     These two characters are common in many indigenous languages of the Northwest Coast and interior, however, they are very unfamiliar and hard to find in any font set that may be contained in a word processing program. 

     Thus, Unicode is a system of encoding that provides the ability to “encode” the characters of the world’s languages.  What this means for many indigenous languages is that the possibility exists that Unicode will have some, most, or all of the characters needed to represent the full spectrum of sounds and how they are represented in a text document. 

 

Unicode in Microsoft Word

 

     Unicode is usually present in Microsoft Word in at least the two following “fonts.”

 

  • Arial Unicode MS
  • Lucid Sans Unicode

 

     The means of accessing these “fonts” is pretty straight forward.  Give it a try. 

 

Step One

 

     Open Microsoft Word and a new document.  From the “Insert” menu select “Symbol.” 

 

 

    

 

 

     Once this is done, a menu will appear like the one below. 

 

Step Two

 

     Click on the “down” button circled here in red.  Now search to see if “Arial Unicode MS” or “Lucid Sans Unicode” is listed.  If they are, choose Arial Unicode MS to start with.  Once you have selected Arial Unicode MS, a full range of characters will appear.  On the side scroll bar, scroll down to see what is contained in this set of characters.       

 

 

        

    

 

Step Three

 

     Once, you have found a desirable “character,” just highlight it in blue and then click the “Insert” button to enter it into your text document.  That’s it!  So every time you need a special character just repeat the above steps.