How to Draw With Text in Notepad

Last Updated: January 31, 2022

Want to make a drawing out of text and other keyboard characters? We'll show you how to draw a picture entirely from text, including special characters you can create with Alt codes, in the Notepad app for Windows.

Steps

1
Learn the basics. They include the following characters:
- A slash, / or \, is used for drawing a slant line.
- A hyphen, -, is used to make a dashed horizontal line.
- An underscore, _, is used to make a continuous horizontal line.
- A 'shift + \', resulting in |, is used to make a dashed vertical line.
- The brackets, including (), [] or {}, are used to make the end of a rectangle.
- The 'numbers square', #, is used to make a grid.
- The space bar is needed, too!
- You might find some use for any other characters, like the 'greater than' and 'less than' signs, < and >, or the percentage sign, %, etc.
2
Learn the 'alt codes', or keep a website containing them opened in front of you. These codes might give you some options, like the playing cards shapes, ♥♦♣♠ (alt + 3, alt + 4, alt + 5 and alt + 6 on the numeric keypad only). This website might be of some help to you: http://alt-codes.org/list/.

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3
Prepare your notepad:
- Open the notepad program; go to format; click on 'Word Wrap' to switch it on.
- Go to format again; click on 'font'; then set the text to 'Lucida Console', regular and 20.
4
Maximize the notepad so that it covers the screen.
5
Start with simple things first, to get the idea. Try to draw a rectangle to see if it works with you or not.
6
Start experimenting!

Community Q&A

Question

What keys to push for straight lines going down?

Vatsalya Gupta

Community Answer

Shift+/ then enter and then Shift+/. This will make straight lines going down.