Phonetic characters, fonts, and editors Data and other documents here are composed using Times New Roman version 5.01, which includes the major unicode phonetic symbols. If you have problems displaying those characters (some appear as boxes), that probably means that you do not have a current version of TNR. A current version of TNR should be part of your operating system at least since Windows Vista, but an upgrade can be purchased. There are free unicode fonts with phonetic characters which can substitute for this version of TNR. The procedure is to download and install the font, then within your editor (such as Word), select the whole document and change the font to whichever font you just installed. The best choices are (in descending order of design preference): Titus Cyberbit Basic (http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/tituut.asp) Doulos SIL (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=DoulosSIL_download#FontsDownload) Charis SIL (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=CharisSIL_download#FontsDownload) Gentium (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=Gentium_basic) Cardo (http://scholarsfonts.net/cardofnt.html) Sporadic problems have been reported using Open Office, in cases where text is cut and pasted from another document and the text contains overstrike diacritics (e.g. [æ ̃]), that some of the text is “double-printed”. This apparently can be overcome by pasting into a new (OO) document, saving, closing, re-opening, and then copying to the intended document. You will have to experiment; if it happens, at least you’ll know that you’re not alone..