Adding special characters in After Effects

Hi everyone, I've tried to resolve this for a long time with no luck. Is there an easy way to add special characters or glyphs to text in After Effects that does not include writing the text in another program and cutting and pasting into After Effects? It seems like it should be a very simple thing to do but no one at Adobe seems to have a clue about it, other than to give out incorrect links? Any help would be hugely appreciated