how do you get special characters in posts

[Don Shepherd]

Well, after much email exchange with Katie, here is what I found:

Terminators backslash left paren and backslash right paren do not center text on the line, which is what I want normally. Terminators dollar dollar and dollar dollar center text on the line.

The following codes must be surrounded by backslash ( and backslash )

backslash sum gives a large sigma
backslash Sigma gives a small sigma (capital S is required)
backslash div gives a division symbol
backslash times gives a multiply symbol
backslash sqrt{2B+1} puts 2B+1 under the radical
backslash sqrt{} gives just the radical symbol, nothing underneath it