To insert the lambda, sigma and theta letters in a Word document, you have different ways:
I. Using the Symbol font:This method is very useful when you need to insert symbols rarely and it works only for Latin or Greek letters.
Anytime, when you type the text in the Word document, you can switch to the Symbol font and use the corresponding Latin letters to enter Greek letters:
Note: This method works for inserting only one letter. Thus, if you want to insert several symbols, you need to repeat these steps for each insertion.
After entering one letter using the Symbol font, the next character is entered using the previous font.
II. Using the Equation:This way is perfect if you don’t need to care about the format and compatibility with previous versions of Microsoft Office (a recommended approach for physical science and mathematics, which require a lot of math in the text with consistent fonts for all equations and symbols):
2. In the equitation block without any additional efforts, you can enter any letter that you need just by typing+Name of the letter:
Note: You can create a shorter name, see the point III.2.
III. Using auto-replace:When you work with many documents and often need to paste one special symbol, you may not want to insert an equation each time. Microsoft Word offers a helpful feature named AutoCorrect. The AutoCorrect options in Microsoft Word propose two different ways to quickly add any special character, such as alambda, sigma or theta letter from the Greek alphabet, or even large pieces of text:
Using the Math AutoCorrect options,
Using the Replace text as you type function of the AutoCorrect options.
III.1. Using AutoCorrect for Math:3. In the AutoCorrect dialog box, on the Math AutoCorrect tab, select the Use Math AutoCorrect rules outside of the math regions option:
III.2. Using Replace text:Using this method, you can come up with some sequence to use for replacing it to the Latin or Greek letter. For example, to replace some Greek letter with not short names, it is possible to use:
To define the new, short names to some Greek letters, do the following:
1. Insert the symbol for which you want to define the short name, using the Symbol font and select it.
Ensure that the Replace text as you type option is selected,
The selected symbol has been inserted in the With field. If you use theFormatted text, select this radio button:
In the Replace field, type the sequence that should be replaced to the symbol,
IV. Using a shortcut key:Microsoft Word provides a way to define the shortcut key for the most often used functions. Thus, you can assign a shortcut for inserting the lambda,sigma or theta letter:
Note: If you use the character very often, you will find it in the Symbol dropdown list:
3. On the Symbol dialog box:
To insert the lambda, sigma or theta from the current font (if exist), from theSubset dropdown list, select the Greek and Coptic:
To insert the lambda, sigma or theta from theSymbol font, from theFont dropdown list, choose the Symbol font:
Note: Be careful, you can reassign the assigned already shortcuts in Word. Be sure, that after Current assign to: there are no active Word functions. In any case, you can reassign any existing function in Word to a different key.
See also this tip in French: Comment insérer lambda, sigma, thêta et autres symboles grecs dans Word.