What ⇧ means
Hold Shift with another key. This is a modifier symbol: it changes the other key's result instead of giving a direction. In a shortcut, ⇧A means press Shift and A; it usually produces a capital A.
The key's idea predates this symbol. In 1878, the Remington No. 2 typewriter introduced a shift key that moved the carriage, the part that carries and moves the paper, so one physical key could print either an uppercase or a lowercase character.
A 1997 Unicode discussion described ⇧ as a Shift symbol. A 2010 proposal by ISO, an international standards organization, for keyboard symbols also called it level 2 select: the alternate character assigned to a key on some layouts.
Read ⇧ as a keyboard instruction
Beside another key, ⇧ is a shortcut recipe: hold Shift while pressing that key. For example, ⇧⌘P means hold Shift and Command, then press P; the action depends on the app.
Use ⇧ for temporary Shift. Caps Lock is a separate lock action.
Technical and instructional: it labels the Shift modifier in keyboard shortcuts, menus, and software guides.
It means temporary Shift, not Caps Lock.
Don't confuse it with
3Questions people ask
1Why does ⇧ look different in different fonts?
Font artwork can change the arrow's outline, weight, and spacing. A font may support ⇧ but lack nearby white-arrow characters, so the appearance varies while the character stays the same.
How to type ⇧
⇧\21E7Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.