How To Include ⌘ in Your Text

Mac OS X Snow Leopard, (and its "missing manual" predecessors) make wide use of it. Appendix E includes it in something like 87 entries. The Mac keyboard calls it "command" but one won't find that entry for it in the Snow Leopard Index--look instead for the symbol itself. Pogue doesn't give it a name. Some users call it "squiggle" and "clover" but its proper name is Place of Interest Sign. The popular font Times Roman does not include it and it is difficult to find among the eighty that do. (Arial has it if you know how to get to it--even that is a bit of a mystery.)

What is missing from The Missing Manual is how to acquire it for typing into a document. Google has many submissions that suggest how to include it, some useful, most inadequate. I found none that describe the simple Mac way. Unfortunately in Snow Leopard's 22 pages on Views and the four on "menulets" the important Menu Extra that is key to the Mac way is not included. Here's how:

1. In System Preferences for the keyboard, check "Show Keyboard and Character Viewer in menu bar."
2. The Viewer icon is a rectangle located among/near icons for Airport and Volume Control on the right portion of the Apple Menu. Click on it for Character and Keyboard options and select Show Character Viewer.
3. In that panel, click on View Characters by Category tab, then select Technical Symbols from list on left.
4. The command symbol may be found in some 80 font collections both normal and bold. Browse to find a suitable one, highlight it and click on Insert button in lower right corner.

Voila! Note that it always lines up with the top of the font letters. You will save time in browsing if you identify it by its proper name. As to Arial, the symbol will be in one of the Arial fonts, but when called for via Office 2000 for Macintosh Word it doesn't seem to appear. A mystery character indeed is Place of Interest Sign!