Leonid Nemirovsky shared a tip he received from David Allison about how to create C/L P/L symbols. David uses the following tip with AutoCAD 2007, but he believes it should work with any version that allows mtext formatting.

First type mtext that looks like this:

C
L PIER

Then highlight the mtext with grips, and in the Change Properties dialog box, change the        line spacing to 0.25. This will produce a centerline symbol in front of the word PIER. It can be a baseline symbol, plate symbol, or whatever symbol is needed.

NOTES FROM CADALYST TIP PATROL:
This tip received reviews on both ends of the quality spectrum, but the positive review raved so much that we feel compelled to let readers give it a try for themselves. Although one Tip Patrol member felt this is an inefficient use of the Mtext Editor features, another cheered, "This may be the best tip I've reviewed of the year!  This is one of those ideas, inherent in the command, that you wonder why no one ever thought of using it like this before.  For 23 years I've used special or custom fonts, or blocks, or (simply) dtext manually superimposed.  As they say in the beer commercials:  'Brilliant! Brilliant!' " Test the tip for yourself and leave a comment about your results.