About special characters

Special characters are non-standard letters (Ω), symbols (©), and punctuation marks (¡) that cannot be found on a typical keyboard. Surpass natively supports 197 special characters in item and source material text fields.

This article explains how to add special characters in Surpass.

Where can I add special characters?

You can use special characters in the following content areas using the formatting toolbar:

• Item question stems
• Answer options for the following question types:
  • Multiple Choice
  • Multiple Response
  • Either/Or
  • Advanced Essay (HTML subjects only)
  • Advanced Short Answer (HTML subjects only)
  • Advanced Numerical Entry (HTML subjects only)
  • Table (Mixed subjects only)
  • Spreadsheet (Mixed subjects only)
  • Drag and Drop (HTML subjects only)
• Introduction Page, Information Page, and Finish Page text fields
• HTML source material text fields

Adding special characters

Select Insert Special Character Ω on the formatting toolbar to open the Select Special Character dialog.

Choose a character from Select Special Character to add it to your content. Special characters are added at the cursor’s location.

Alternatively, you can add special characters in the Source view. To add a special character using HTML, enter an ampersand (&) followed by the character’s entity name and a semicolon (;).

All special characters in Surpass are listed in the following table alongside their HTML entity names.

List of special characters