What are the meanings of the symbols on the keyboard? Why are they put together with the letter keys? For most frequent computer users, it is not uncommon to give a blurred answer to this question even though we’ve been working with it day by day.

Actually the symbols have their individual roles to improve the typing efficiency, let’s update our keyboard knowledge from the control keys.

There are mainly 9 kinds of control symbols used on keyboards.

Esc: Short for Escape. Esc key allows the user to terminate a process or quit a task if the program is running with error.

Ctrl/control: Short for Control. It’s also named modifier key used in pair with another key to perform keyboard shortcuts and other commands. The simplest one is to select all text by press Ctrl+A at the same time.

Fn: Short for Function. Fn is put on the laptop and some desktop keyboards. Fn key used to work together with another function keys like F1-F2 to do a secondary function defined by the operating system such as adjusting the volume of the speaker, the brightness of the screen and so on.

: It’s Microsoft logo. The windows key in the Microsoft Windows operating system is defined to trigger a keyboard shortcut with another key. For example, pressing both the logo+E could open Windows Explorer.

: The Command key is only found on the Apple keyboards. It is also used in keyboard shortcuts on Apple Macintosh computers, such as Command+C to copy or Command+V to paste.

: It is the Menu key or Application key. It calls up a menu for the current window or selected text. Pressing this button is usually equal to do the same as the menu pops out when we right click the mouse.

If you get the tips above? The more tips will be followed later.