OS X KEYBOARD SYMBOLS
About Keyboard Symbols
OS X Keyboard Symbols are the basis of all Apple Macintosh keyboard
shortcuts.
Below is a table that presents all Apple keyboard symbols -
taken from the book
Core Mac OS X Keyboard
Shortcuts.
Keyboard symbols are shorthand notation designed to
simplify the naming of and
referring to keyboard shortcuts.
Picture 1: Keyboard Symbols
READ MORE ABOUT THE BOOK - CORE MAC OS X KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Keyboard Symbols in drop-down Menus
If you click the top menu bar on your Mac screen from
within Finder, for example
“File”, you will see a vertical menu drop down displaying
various words and phrases
(see picture below).
These words and phrases are commands. To the right of
some of these commands are
groups of symbols and characters. These characters and
symbols represent the
respective keyboard combination for each shortcut.
From the picture above, the keyboard shortcut for "File
Open" is 
. So to use this
keyboard shortcut simply press the
then "O" key at the same time. Once you
understand what each symbol means, you can apply any
keyboard shortcut you like.