There are many different font sets available for use on a computer. For instance, in Word 2003, all you need to do is select insert < symbol and then from the font dialog box select any font labeled as Unicode. However, since any Unicode font set will contain hundreds of different characters, I recommend that you use a font set, such as IPA-SAM, that is designed specifically for phonetic transcription and that can be directly used in Microsoft Word. Download the self-extracting file on the page to which the above link takes you, install it, and it's ready to use. I work with one of the IPA-SAM font sets called ipa-samd roman. It's one of the choices in the font dialog box described above.

With IPA-SAM, you can create keystrokes for certain characters not directly available on your keyboard. For instance, if you Shift-D, you get /ð/. Press @ and you get a schwa. You can also create custom keystrokes for other symbols. I'll show how to do this in class.