After 25 years of using Apple computers I am stumped! Just read two articles in MacLife; both had tips to fix or improve performance that required pressing or holding down particular keys. One key looks almost like an equal sign in which the upper line is a simple horizontal line but the lower one is a bit shorter with the left end of the line turned up to meet the upper line. I can not press that key because my Mac keyboard has no key like that! What am I missing/ not understanding here? All help appreciated. Dave

Can you post links to those articles? What were the keys supposed to do? Can you find the symbol in Character Viewer? If so, you can post it here.

Another thought: Look at Keyboard Viewer to see if that symbol appears there.

I scanned through Character Viewer, including all of Unicode, and nothing of that description shows up. Mayhap it's an artifact of OP's viewer (and is actually something completely different)?

Sounds a bit like the symbol Apple uses to represent the Option key. Go to the Apple menu and look at the key combination listed next to the Force Quit… command. Could the first symbol in that combination be what you're looking for?

This is the symbol I'm referring to, if it renders correctly in your browser:

⌥

⌥ is Unicode U+2325 and UTF-8 E2 8C A5 .
But it doesn't meet the description given, viz. "left end of the line turned up to meet the upper line".

Could be a semantics issue, so I think it's time for our OP to post a screenshot.

Yes, that's why I said "Sounds a bit like the symbol Apple uses to represent the Option key."

Surely your imagination can devise a scenario in which the Option key symbol appears as described by Dave? Perhaps he's looking at a page on a mobil device with a small font, or a fuzzy screen cap. Point is, I can not press that key because my Mac keyboard has no key like that! strongly suggests that the reference he encountered is a symbolic rather than literal one. I challenge you to find a more plausible speculative candidate.

I assumed that Dave was viewing the articles on a standard Mac so screen resolution wouldn't be an issue. But beyond that we don't know what hardware he's got or what OS version he's using — which, of course, makes all our opining moot.

Artie's right, Dave needs to re-enter the discussion to put speculation to rest.

Considering the context in which the Dave's symbol turned up, the option key really is a prime suspect.

The weird thing, though, is that I've got a recollection of having seen a symbol like he's describing, but I haven't got a clue what, when, or where, nor was searching the least bit fruitful.

I thought Dave's source might be the recent Mac|Life article Make Your Mac Go Faster: Top 10 Tips (April 21, 2015), but nary a glimpse of the elusive key.
Unless and until Dave comes back into the fray and fills in the blanks, I'm going with "hallucination".

⥨

Could it be an older version of an "arrow" key (as shown above)?

I think I've seen it in Quark (yes, Quark) when you press Shift. I know I have seen it as a shift key somewhere.

Two weeks down the road from the original query and nary a sign of Dave or his disambiguation of the issues.
C'est la vie.

It's the Option key.

http://www.howtogeek.com/183636/how-the-command-and-option-keys-work-on-a-mac/

Go to the finder under file and look at what the shortcut keys are for "New Smart Folder"

Yes, that shortcut shows ⌥, but there is an alternate Y symbol ⎇ in Character Viewer.

I don't think that either one matches the OP's original description. Character Viewer shows some font variations of both, so maybe it's a font issue.

I think that what I said earlier is on the mark: Considering the context, the option sign totally fits the description.

Artie is right. What I did is put a screen capture of the symbol into a Google Images search. Google labeled the picture as "Apple Option" and this is one of the results along with the link I posted above:

http://brandonsappletipstricks.blogspot.com/2013/01/os-x-how-to-sleep-restart-and-shutdown.html

May 17th:



May 3rd:


I realize two weeks is an eternity on the internet, but if you would read the thread from the beginning, you'd see that the appearance of the option key symbol is not the issue. The issue is whether or not that symbol is in fact what the original poster saw, and only the original poster can enlighten us about that.