(my first discussion post, howdy DN!)

I'm sure you've all used a text editor with the ability to add special characters. Have you ever questioned the button icon used?

You're typing some spanish, and can't find the eñe.. where do I click? Should i google it, and copy/paste? ... this should be a simple control right?

Ah of course, a button with a character from the greek alphabet! Surely clicking the Ω is going to reveal my special spanish characters...

To be perfectly clear, i'm designing for K-12 students and teachers, so a very wide demographic. I suggested we add the term 'symbols' next to the omega icon in our text editor to increase initial understanding...

And received some rather rude feedback, explaining how millions of people already know how to use it, and after linking him to a Luke W slide deck discussing the age-old hamburger debate, he told me he was an 'acquantance of Luke's' (whatever that means) and imparted some of Lukes 2004 wisdom on me - "when we follow patterns that are established by widely used applications then those applications are essentially "training" users for us"

Despite the fact that i'm not changing the icon, just adding text to increase understanding rather than change understanding. (in a world where alt text isn't enough!)

Anyways, all this to be said on a monday to ask...

Have you run into this odd wide-spread use of a greek character to universally indicate special characters in all languages in your designs, and scratch your head for a moment?

How did you deal with it?

Here's a ckeditor demo so you can see what i'm talking about. http://ckeditor.com/demo