How to Create the Symbol §

[radford_bean]

Can someone tell me how to generate the section symbol (§) often used in legislative bills? InDesign tells me there is no glyph available.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Hi @radford_beanL

What operating system and what font?

On my Mac, I just press Opt+6 for §. On Windows, hold down the Alt key as you tap 0167 on the numeric keypad. Of course, the glyph has to be available in the font for this to work.

~Barb

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Barb's given the canonical answer — and if you're not familiar with alt-codes, it's worth looking them up so you know how to insert many more symbols and letter variants than most Glyph panels and menus allow.

But the short answer here should be that it's under Type | Insert Special Characters | Symbols | Section Mark. (With a shortcut key of Alt+6 on my Windows system, as already noted.) If that feature doesn't insert a section mark, you may be using a font without that glyph, or with unusual mapping.

[radford_bean]

Thank you for the help. It turns out that for some reason my glyph set doesn't include the section symbol. My coworker has it, but for some reason I don't, even though our InDesign should be the same. 

[Barb Binder]

Hi @radford_bean:

It's possible you had different versions of the same font. You can compare the two by opening up the document, and choosing Type > Find/Replace Font. Click the font in question and then click the More Info button. Have the coworker do the same thing and then compare the Info that appears at the bottom of the dialog box.

~Barb

[radford_bean]

I have resolved the issue. Turns out my agency's font family doesn't support the section glyph. I had to resort to using Cambia.