How To Type Sanskrit Letters in a Word Document

 

 

How To Type Sanskrit Letters in a Word Document

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Anyone typing Sanskrit words, or indeed words in any Indian language, in a word document, faces the problem as to how to type Sanskrit letters in the Roman script. A question in the comments section of my last blog brought this problem to my attention today, and so I decided to explain the particular method used by me for anyone who might find it useful.

I faced this problem for many, many years. In fact, ever since I started typing out my books and articles (my first two books were handwritten) and sent to the publisher in manuscript form. For some reason, although the very science of Linguistics came into being with the discovery of Sanskrit and the Indo-European connection, Microsoft Word, for decades, had countless obscure symbols in their repertoire, for sounds found in extremely obscure languages of the world, but no symbols for sounds found in Sanskrit and in Indian languages. Thus, there were no symbols for  ट,  ड,  ण,  ळ.  However, in recent years, they have added these symbols, ṭ  ḍ  ṇ  ḷ , into their list.

The Microsoft Word list of symbols is, nevertheless still extremely sloppy and unsystematic. For example, they could have very systematically given a full list of every possible symbol given by them, plus each of those symbols with the full list of diacritic marks, so that it would be up to the discretion of the viewer to use whichever combination of symbol + diacritical mark that he found necessary for his own particular purpose.

However, the Microsoft Word system is very arbitrary in its provision of combinations of symbol + diacritical mark. Thus, formerly, they did not provide symbols for  t,  d,  n,  l,  etc. with a dot below the letter, to represent ṭ,  ḍ,  ṇ ,  ḷ , etc.  Now they have provided these symbols, so at least the problem of Sanskrit transliteration has been solved. But the list is still otherwise very haphazard: there are countless vowel symbols (e.g. ǝ, which I would have required to represent the Konkani sound अ) but the same symbol with a horizontal line above it to represent the long (dīrgha) version is not available.

But keeping other transliteration woes aside, Microsoft Word symbols are now available for most Sanskrit sounds. The only problem is: how to use these symbols when typing out or transliterating a large number of  Sanskrit or Indian-language words, sentences, paragraphs or entire works in the Roman alphabet. No-one has the time or patience to keep going into the "insert", "symbols" section of Microsoft Word all the time. Is there a way in which one can just type out these special symbols straightaway?

Usually people use a system of capital letters, where a capital A stands for आ, etc. That system is also all right, if anyone wants to use it. But, if anyone wants to use the actual phonetic symbols like  ā,  ī,  ṭ,  ṇ,  ḷ,  etc., here is the method used by me. There may be other methods used by other people who constantly need to transliterate words from any language into the Roman alphabet, but I give below the particular method used by me.

 

Method: I have permanently fixed the Sanskrit transliteration symbols into my Microsoft Word system by means of the "insert" function. So I can just smoothly go on typing, and the symbols appear automatically. The only problem is I have to type many additional keys, and keep going back to delete blank spaces every time; but all that is still infinitely faster and more convenient than going into "insert" every time.

How does one permanently fix symbols into the system? Here is how I have done it:

In the word document, right on top, go into "insert", which follows "home". Right at the end, you will see "symbol". Click "symbol" and then "more symbols". A chart of symbols will appear. Below on the left hand side of the chart, you will see "autocorrect". Click on that. If you fix a symbol on "autocorrect" then it will automatically come, each time you type the particular combination of letters you have decided upon. I decided that double x rarely appears in any word. So I have fixed all my Sanskrit letters (and, in my next article on Konkani, I require a great many more vowel letters, so I even use triple x and quadruple x) on xx. Thus whenever I type axx, and then space, (in my word document, not on this blog) the axx automatically becomes ā, and so on.

To fix the changes into autocorrect, you have to put the required combination, say axx, into the "replace" column, and the required symbol, in this case ā, into the "with" column. Change "formatted text" to "plain text" and then click "ok". The change will be registered.

There is of course, the minor problem that you have to go back one step to delete the space (and in fact, before typing axx also, you have to leave a space; so that after typing whatever you are typing you have to go back and delete all the blank spaces), but you get used to it after some time. For my Konkani article, I have fixed axx for ā, axxx for ɑ, and axxxx for ᾱ.

These auto-corrections take place only in the word-document, not on the blog, so they have to be copy-pasted from my word document into my blog (whether I am uploading the entire article or simply inserting a word or paragraph).

 

I hope this will be useful for some people who want to type Sanskrit words or entire pieces in Roman transliteration.

 

a ā   ɑ ᾱ   i ī   u ū    e ē   ɛ ɛ̄   o ō   ɔ ɔ̄