When preparing a file for input to an Atlas program using MS Word it is possible to employ certain non-standard characters available to the word processor user to represent Atlas characters or combinations of Atlas characters. None of the characters listed below are present on a PC keyboard but may be input by typing the numerical value of the Unicode character followed by Alt/X in MS Word. In addition, experience has shown this subterfuge to be useful when dealing with text which has been produced by optical character recognition (OCR) – a far from completely accurate process.
| Unicode character | Unicode value | Atlas equivalent |
| α | 03B1 | α |
| β | 03B2 | β |
| ≠ | 2260 | =[BS]/ |
| ≡ | 2261 | =[BS]_ |
| ≢ | 2262 | =[BS]_[BS]/ |
| ≤ | 2264 | <[BS]_ |
| ≥ | 2265 | >[BS]_ |
| ± | 00B1 | +[BS]_ |
| ‹ (left guillemet) | 2039 | < |
| › (right guillemet) | 203A | > |
| ß (gothic German ss) | 00DF | β |
| ‘ | 2018 | ' |
| ’ | 2019 | ' |
| em-dash | 2013 | - (minus) |
| en-dash | 2014 | - (minus) |