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Is there an easy way in Microsoft Word 2010 to make words appear like keystrokes the way we can here in Superuser?

Something like this: Ctrl + V

I know that <kbd> is an HTML tag, but in normal HTML that just switches to a fixed-width font. In fact, that's how Word treats it if you paste something from SU into a Word doc:

Pasted into Word

If there's not a standard way to do this in Word, is there a free font that might accomplish the same thing? I thought I'd seen some before but couldn't find any at the regular places I find fonts (dafont.com, fontspace.com).

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    This is what I get when I copy from Chrome and paste in Word 2010: i.stack.imgur.com/fxLi4.png Oct 15, 2012 at 18:33
  • Is that formatted text (that, for example, can be part of a sentence, and moves when the sentence moves) or is it an image? Oct 15, 2012 at 20:51
  • @Scott It appears that it is actual text. I used Firefox for my example, but when I tried it in Chrome it does copy the formatting pretty close. Technically it's just adding grey borders, as was suggested in the accepted answer, but it does work.
    – techturtle
    Oct 16, 2012 at 2:33
  • @techturtle: Sorry; that question was meant for Oliver. My mistake; I didn’t address it properly. Oct 18, 2012 at 22:44
  • @Oliver: In your example (copying from Chrome and pasting into Word 2010) — is that formatted text (that, for example, can be part of a sentence, and moves when the sentence moves) or is it an image? Oct 18, 2012 at 22:44

2 Answers 2

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Or, if you’d prefer not to download a font, do it in Word.  Just select the text and format Borders (and, optionally, Shading): screen snapshot showing text formatted with Borders and Shading

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    I can't believe I didn't think of this before. I just tried it out, setting a space before and after each word/character and then used the "shadow" border in word and it looks awesome. Definitely going to use this one again in the future.
    – techturtle
    Oct 16, 2012 at 2:32
  • Could @techturtle's addition of using the shadow border and spacing be integrated into the answer? It's a fantastic addition to a fantastic answer, and shouldn't be relegated to a comment.
    – Ben I.
    Feb 25, 2019 at 17:17
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One of these might do the trick:

http://www.fontspace.com/category/keycaps

Also, this one is nice.

http://blogs.gurulabs.com/stuart/archives/2005/09/free_keycaps_fo_1.html

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  • +1, this type of font is what I've been using for years now.
    – Karan
    Oct 15, 2012 at 19:33
  • The 2nd one you listed looks great for what I was looking to do this morning when I wrote this question. It's a little weird to work with the extended characters (for Ctrl, etc.) especially when trying to update the font sizes since they come out looking too small compared with the regular fonts. But it worked for what I needed.
    – techturtle
    Oct 16, 2012 at 2:29

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