Thanks to everyone who replied to my problem - well nearly everyone.

On 23 Nov 2011, at 18:40, John Brownie wrote:

> Doug Browne wrote:
>> I don't know if it's the result of updating Lion, or whether old age has played tricks with my memory, but things have changed!
>> 
>> I used to click an icon in the menu bar which brought up huge selections of characters that I could drop into the document I was writing at the time. There is still a character viewer, but it doesn't have much in it and not the neat fractions, half, fifth, three quarters etc. that I need from time to time. I have found some in System Preferences - Language & Text. But where has the full character list gone?
> 
> I haven't actually looked at Character Viewer since moving to Lion, and it is rather shocking to see what you describe! Why does it have to be different in every iteration of OS X? However, there's a gear menu at the top of the panel, and you can choose which categories you want shown (choose Customise List). Unfortunately, there's no simple way to say "I want all of them!" You can drag and drop the categories into the order you want, though, so you can get the fractions first - you want ① Digits - All to be first, so it will show that when you open the panel.

That's the answer!       

Old age made me think that 'Customize List' only referred to the size of the characters. Now I have most of what I need back again.

Doug