Where is the copyright sign on the keyboard?

If you decide that your text or photo needs copyright protection, you may want to add the  ‘copyrighted material’ symbol to it with your personal name or the name of your business.

The symbol sits on the same key as the letter ‘g’ on British and American QWERTY keyboards. Press Option and type ‘g’, you will get the ‘c’ inside a circle — ©. On the French AZERTY layout the sign is with letter ‘c’. Press Option and type ‘c’.

Registered (®) sign is Option+R on both QWERTY and AZERTY layouts.

Copyright (©), registered (®), trade mark (™) and a number of other letter-like signs are also in the Character palette. Under Edit menu choose Special characters and when the character palette opens go to Symbols >  Letterlike Symbols. Find the sign you want, click on it and drag to your document. It inserts in text like a letter. 

Characters from the pallette work with TextEdit too: access the Character palette via Edit > Special characters.

Drawing a Snowman.

This is a video tutorial on how to draw a Snowman in Apple's iWork Pages. Watch it here or on my YouTube channel.

Use the Draw tool to create basic shapes. Activate it from the Shapes menu or by going via Insert > Shape > Draw a Shape. 

It works like 'connect the dots' exercises in children's drawing books. And it is as simple. Each click by the draw tool creates a dot. Each new dot is connected to the previous by a default line. To finish the shape, click on the first dot again, or double click on the last dot you've made.

To make the lines curve, drag the mouse around slightly after clicking. The dot will show a 'propeller' with two blades. 

Click on the tip of the propeller and drag. This changes the curve. Pull out to make a more rounded shape, push in to 'slim down' the shape.

Eyes, nose, the bellybutton and the bucket are default shapes from the Shapes menu edited to fit the design. 

Eyes are Ovals.

The nose is a triangle. Under Format menu, choose Shape > Make editable. The triangle will show red dots - editing points. Click on the red dot and drag it to change the shape of the triangle. Double click to make the shape curving and drag the propeller tips to shape the triangle into the Snowman's nose. 

The bucket is a rectangle from the Shapes menu. Make it editable and shape into a trapezoid (top side shorter than the bottom side.)

Use the Graphic Inspector to change colours,  thickness of the shape's contours and add shadows.

The whole project takes 30 minutes to one hour to complete.

I've used the tools and options available in both iWork'08 and '09. If you only have the older '08 version you will be able to make this Snowman too. iWork'09 has some additional features including Advanced Gradient Fill with which you can add a 3D effect to the drawing.  

This video does not contain explanatory notes and is meant for those who are already comfortable with iWork basics. If you have any questions or comments, please send them in.

Read the ten-step tutorial on how to create a Christmas card in Pages. 

iWork Cookbook. A perfect Christmas present for Mac users.

Click on the cover to go to the author's page

If you are getting a Mac this Christmas, or planning to give one, or already working on one, here's a perfect accompaniment: 'iWork for Mac OS X Cookbook.' 

The book comes from the author of I Work in Pages, the blog you've come to trust and rely on when using this brilliant productivity suite. Thousands of Mac users from all over the world visit us every day for tips and answers to their queries.

It's not about cooking, the recipes in the book are about completing projects you never thought you would be able to do, described as clearly as how to make porridge or cook a perfect poached egg.

It's not another chatty version of a user's manual, the book leads you to break through techno fears and discover an incredible creative power in yourself.

iWork Cookbook covers Pages (text and layout), Keynote (presentations) and Numbers (spreadsheets). 

Step-by-step recipes show little known tricks when working with text, photos and graphics, from making clip art and logos to creating cards and posters, or publishing newsletters, magazines and books. Learn how to make videos for YouTube and add your photos to graphs and charts.

Visit the author's page on Packt Publishing to read a sample chapter and order the book. Some free content is also available on Safari Books. iWork Cookbook comes in paperback and Kindle versions.

The book is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other major book sites.

If you are a reviewer and would like to have a copy to review please contact Packt Publishing (email: reviewrequest at packtpub.com) or the editor of I Work in Pages (post a comment or go via email in profile). 

Here are a few excerpts from reviews:

'I learned about iWork through the author'

'What many people do not realize is that Apple's iWork Pages software is an easy-to-use full-fledged Desktop Publishing program, and the author had been using the program for years in his own publishing company. When I first switched to Mac, I learned about iWork through the author, who helped me quickly learn the program. For any small company I think iWork is a cost-effective solution for DTP; we use it in our own company. And the author has written a book that teaches the reader in a step-by-step fashion, how to quickly and effectively use iWork. I have been using iWork for over 6 years and even I find his book a much-needed reference to show me tricks I don't know.' 

(Richard Koulbanis)

'Anichkin is making a deeper point: free your mindset with iWork'

'The gist of what the author is trying to convey is to free your mindset when using iWork. Do not be conceptually confined to just having iWork be for one purpose. See if what it outputs or can accept as input can also be associated with other supposedly unrelated packages on a machine, like the Microsoft Office suite, or its arch competitor, Open Office.

At a more mundane level, iWork can import and export to those packages, so as to transparently enable these data interchanges. So why doesn't the book just say so? Because Anichkin is making a deeper point. In your mind, ask what possible benefits could arise from this cross overs. Keep doing this, rather than putting iWork or those packages into standalone concrete silos.

Chapter 6 addresses a long running complaint about iWork - that it lacks a Clip Art folder. Instead, the author suggests that the complaints are misplaced. There are numerous other applications from which you can readily import images. And he goes on to show at some length how to do this. Again, as earlier, this is simple. Once you know that it is possible, that is the main thing. The precise steps involved are a lesser detail.

Going further, chapter 8 is for the person needing professional quality output printing of graphics. It shows how iWork can be used at this level, for creating press ready PDFs. The process steps here are not confined to operations inside iWork. You are advised about manual real world steps that you need to coordinate with your local print shop to achieve the best quality hardcopy.'

(W Boudville)

'I've now got the book right next to me, already marked with stickies'

'I became a Pages devotee when I launched a monthly glossy magazine on a shoestring and didn't want to (couldn't afford to!) invest in InDesign etc. By following Anichkin's step by step tutorials I was soon able to master all the design and graphics I needed to create a smart looking product.

Better than going to the blog, I've now got the book right next to me, already marked with stickies so I can go straight to the recipes I need. Definitely recommended for anyone who wants to create sophisticated design and graphics without shelling out a fortune on software.'

(Miranda Ingram)

Where is the telephone clip art image?

If you are looking for the telephone icon (clip art), dip into the Characters palette on your Mac. 

In an iWork document, go to Special Characters under the Edit menu. When the Characters window opens, go to Symbols > Miscellaneous Symbols. You will see several telephone icons there. Click on one and drag it to your document. 

Symbols in the Character palette behave like letters. They move with the text. You can change the font size and colour or a font variation. Click on Font Variation at the bottom of the window to see which variations are available.

If you need a graphic image, enlarge the letter-like symbol and make a screenshot of it or export to PDF.

If you don’t use iWork, you can access the Characters palette from TextEdit. Special Characters option is under the Edit menu.

The Pages Walk/Mandela Way T-34 Tank.

Readers of 'I Work in Pages' know that I collect images of places and businesses called Pages, even when they are completely unrelated to Apple's computer programme. It's just for amusement value. Here's another one.

This Russian T-34 tank stands on the corner of Pages Walk and Mandela Way in the London borough of Bermondsey, postcode SE1. The T-34 was the main battle tank of the Red Army during the second world war and is still in use in some countries.

The urban legend says that Russel Gray, a London real estate developer, bought the tank in an East European country and put it on the plot in 1995 after the local council had refused his planning application. It is said that the gun points in the direction of the council building.

The Pages Walk tank has become a local landmark and a 'canvas' for graffiti artists who continuously repaint it with their work. In this 2005 photo the tank is in pink.

I couldn't find a photo the Pages Walk street plaque. If you have one, please send it to me.

Photo by David Edgar (from Wikimedia).

How to type the degree sign for temperature.

It’s getting cold and I’ve started marking daily temperature on my running log. Which made me think, does everybody know how to type the degree (º) sign?

On both British and US English QWERTY keyboards, press the Option (ALT) key and type zero in the top row of the keyboard (not on the zero in the numerical section of an extended keyboard.) The large zero will turn into a tiny degree sign shifted upwards.

Then you may add C for Celsius or centigrade or F for Fahrenheit: -1ºC or +30ºF.

Wikipedia has an article on various temperature measurement systems here.

If you are looking for weather clip art symbols, there is a selection of them in the Special Characters palette. Under Edit, got to Special Characters, and when the palette opens, look in the Symbols > Miscellaneous folder. A selection of snowflakes is also there. 

Click on the symbol and drag it to your document.

iWork Book on Twitter Page Background.

This is the new design for the background of my Twitter page at iworkinpages. 

It has my book on it and the photo of the famous apple which I've use in the graphic panel of the title of this blog and its favicon (small icon next to the internet address.)

The apple variety is called Winter Banana. My book, with a free sample chapter, is available on Packt Publishing here and on all major book-selling websites.

Wind Monsters: Create a Slideshow in iPhoto, Import into Pages.

This is a short video I made in iPhoto. I've used a series of photos of our local wind farm. It was a grey, rainy day and the giant turbines, with their bright white blinkers, suddenly looked like some sort of techno-monsters. I called the video 'Wind Monsters'.

Here's a concise how-to:

In iPhoto, select the photos you want to make into a slideshow. If they are all together, click on the first one, press Shift, and press on the last one. They will all be selected.

Click on the plus sign in the bottom left corner and, when dialogue opens, choose 'Slideshow'.

Give the slideshow a title, choose a theme and music. The icons for these are at the bottom of the iPhoto window. Click on Preview to see how it will work.

Next, under File menu, choose Export and a film file format QuickTime.

When the slideshow appears on your Desktop as a .mov or .m4v file you can use it in your iWork documents —Pages, Numbers or Keynote.

Open a Pages document and drag the movie file onto it. It will look like any other graphic object, but if you click on it the slideshow will start to play.

Controls and settings for the slideshow are in QuickTime Inspector (see picture below). The QuickTime files can be uploaded to YouTube or other video sharing site.

Don't forget to check the copyright status of both the photos and the music. Here, the photos are mine and the music is from the 'Sample Music' selection provided with iPhoto.