Using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet in your assignments No doubt at some point you will need

to use the symbols of the IPA in your coursework assignments. This document explains how to do this. It is very important that you follow these instructions, or else the phonetic symbols on the electronic version of your assignment will not work. If that happens, we will not be able to return the hard copy of your assignment to you, but must keep it in case the external examiner wants to look at it at the end of the year. If you follow these instructions carefully, then the fonts will work on the electronic version and you can have the hard copy back. Why do the symbols not work sometimes? Because it depends on the font that is installed on the computer that the file is printed out on. There are a large number of phonetic fonts available, and while they all do the same job and look pretty much the same on paper, a computer that does not have the particular font you use installed will not display them correctly. For example, if you use a particular font on your home computer, and then print out your assignment on a University machine that does not have that font installed, your symbols will not display, or print, correctly. The symbols will only behave themselves on computers with exactly the same font already installed. So, its important that everyone does the same thing, to ensure the fonts work on the Departmental computers. This document assumes you are using Microsoft Word to word process your assignment.

1. Make sure you have a font installed Explore the list of fonts already available to you. With a new Word document open, scroll down the font box, the one that reads "Times New Roman" (unless you have changed it). Have you got a font called Lucida Sans Unicode or Arial Unicode MS? If so, select it. If not, go here: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm and download either of them (Lucida Sans Unicode is smaller in file size but has all the symbols youll need) and install it (see below). When you have done this, open a new Word document and select it (if its not there, you might have to close down all Word windows and load up the program again.

Installing fonts Note: you may not be able to install fonts on University machines, as you probably wont have the relevant permissions. Campus machines should already have these fonts installed, though. You may have to install them on your own machine at home. To do this, once you have downloaded the fonts from the website above: go to Control Panel (its in the Start menu), and double click on fonts. Go to File then select Install New Fonts. Youll see a dialogue box like this:

Select the folder into which you have saved your new fonts, and they will appear in the List of Fonts box. Select them by clicking on them (to select more than one keep CTRL pressed while you click on them, or click Select All), and then click on OK and make sure the copy fonts to Fonts folder box is ticked. This will install the fonts to your machine. You only have to do this once. 2. Using the fonts in a Word document There are two ways to do this, and both of them are a bit fiddly. Youll find you get quicker at it once you have had some practice. 2(i) Insert > symbol With your Word Document open, go to the Insert menu, and select Symbol. A dialogue box like the one below will appear.

Make sure it says Arial Unicode MS or Lucida Sans Unicode in the Font box (that is, it must say the name of the font you downloaded and installed in Step 1 above). If you scroll down the available symbols (there are many!) youll find the one you need. Double click it, and it will appear in your document. Note, you dont have to do this with all symbols, because you can get many of them just by typing the letter on the keyboard (e.g. /a/, /b/, /t/ etc). Make sure the font you use to do this is the same as the font you use when you use the Insert > Symbol method, or your transcription will look uneven and strange. You will become more and more aware of where the fonts are in the box the more you do it.

2(ii) Using Hex codes The second way of putting symbols in your Word document seems more complicated than the first (and its got a scary name and involves scary codes) but in many ways its easier. However, it only works in Word 2002 or later. It involves typing in a code, and then converting that code (automatically) to the symbol. This works because every symbol has its own code, and Word knows what this is. However, it means you must know what the code is too. But you do not have to remember this, because there is a special list, prepared by John Wells of UCL, which lists all the codes for all the symbols you will need. Ive converted John Wells webpage to a PDF document and saved it along with this information, so download it from the FAQ page and youll see. First, you need to make sure your phonetics font is selected in your document (e.g. by changing the box that says Times New Roman to Lucida Sans Unicode or Arial Unicode MS. Then, in the PDF file called phoneticsfonts_hexcode.pdf (on the FAQ page download it), look from page 3 and find the symbol you want to insert into your Word document, and look in the column that says hex. This is the hexadecimal code for that symbol. Type in the code into your Word document, exactly as it appears in the list. Select the code, by dragging your mouse and selecting the numbers and/or letters as you would select any other type of text. When the characters are selected (make sure youve got all four of them), keep your finger on the ALT key and then press X. And, as if by magic, the code should turn itself into the symbol you need. Check its the right one, as you may have typed in the code incorrectly. An example If I want to use the symbol for sound at the beginning of the word judge, I would first make sure a phonetic font is selected (Ill use Arial Unicode MS in this example). Then Id type: $ (which is the code for the voiced post-alveolar affricate)

Then Id select the code, and press Alt-X, and the following would appear: Then for the rest of the word judge Id put the code for the symbol I need next directly after the symbols that has just appeared, and repeat the process. So, for judge (as spoken by me), Id have:

 $ $

press Alt-X with 028A selected and Id get  (press Alt-X with 02A4 selected and Id get 

This gets much easier with practice. Tip: You can copy and paste the symbols themselves from one place in the document to another, so it might be useful to put a range of symbols that you will use often at the top of the page, copy and paste them to the relevant places in your transcription, and then delete them from the top of the page when you hand in your assignment. That way, youll only have to use the codes once.

Unclear? Doesnt work? Feel free to ask me a question via email (k.d.watson@lancaster.ac.uk) or come and see me about it.

Kevin Watson November 2006