Selecting Special Characters Tab from the View menu will open the Characters tab in the left hand panel.  This area can also be accessed by clicking on the Characters tab itself.     Special Characters are the characters which a browser cannot read without special code.  These characters are usually associated with foreign (at least to us) languages, however they also include code for characters like the greater than and less then  signs.  Since many of these characters are used in HTML code; if a user enters the character into their page, the browser would interpret the character as code instead of text.  By entering the special character code, the user it telling the browser that they want the browser to display the character itself and not interpret it as code.     The special character code can be inserted into the document two way.  The user can either double click on the special character in the list, or they can drag and drop the character into the document.