I’ve been using the Mac for about forty years and spent a significant portion of my early time producing typographically rich print and digital documents. I consider myself quite knowledgeable on macOS keyboard shortcuts for entering typographic symbols.

For example, I know the trademark symbol (™) is Option-2, the copyright symbol (©) is Option-g, a true bullet (•) is Option-8, and the “curly” quotes are Option-[ and Option-] to open (“, ‘), with the Shift key to close them (”, ’). I know how to type accented characters, like é and ü (Option-e or Option-u, then the letter; also Option-i, Option-n, and Option-`). I can even type the en-dash (–) and em-dash (—)—that’s Option-dash and Option-Shift-dash, respectively—despite being human, not an LLM.

And I was dead certain I knew that the degree symbol was Option-0 (º). But today, while editing my SNL 360° videos piece, I learned I was wrong. That’s the “masculine ordinal indicator,” used in some Romance languages for abbreviations. For example, in Spanish you might write 1º (“primero,” similar to writing “first” as 1st).

You get the actual degree symbol (°) by pressing Option-Shift-8. There is a subtle but real difference; here they are together for comparison (degree, ordinal): ° º. (Your choice of font might make a difference here.)

At some point I knew the correct keyboard combination because I read it in the seminal book on Mac typography, The Mac is Not a Typewriter by Robin Williams (no, not that one) and regularly taught it to others. Publishing the wrong symbol would have been utterly mortifying.

If you’d like to learn these “dead key” combinations, here are two tips:

Tip 1: Add the Keyboard Viewer to your menubar. Apple Support has instructions. Once enabled, open it and press Option and Shift-Option to see each character you can type.

Tip 2: There are several accented characters that can’t be typed directly using a dead key combination. For example, while you can type â with Option-i then a, there’s no similar combination for ǎ or ā. Instead, hold down the a key for a second, and a popover will appear with all of the accented characters. Click the character (or type the associated number) to enter it. Most alphabetic characters have accented variants.