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FTA: The symbol was included in the original Macintosh font Chicago, and could be inserted by typing a Ctrl+Q key combination.

That’s incorrect. The original Macintosh didn’t even _have_ a control key.

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Somewhat tangential, the Command+Q shortcut to immediately, irrevocably, infuriatingly QUIT WHATEVER YOU HAVE OPEN is absolutely diabolical. Considering all day I type Command+Tab to switch applications, and Command+W to close browser tabs. There's no way to remap it to "do nothing", so you have to remap it to do "something else". The best I could figure out is make it show and hide my app bar.

Not Chrome, you need to hold Cmd+Q to quit. I wish more apps adopted this pattern.

And Control was never the ‘make a special character’ key. That’s always been Option.

It was, but there were exceptions. It turns it that this symbol, in the Chicago font, is mapped to a control code (this is pre-Unicode; fonts were limited to 256 characters, so such creative use wasn’t considered deadly sin) https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/te/te_...:

Chicago Control-Q prints propeller or clover symbol

Date Written: 7/4/90

Last reviewed: 6/14/93

How do I get the character that represents the clover used for Command-key equivalents in documents and in menus?

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This key is documented in the Apple Style Guide, which is available on the latest Developer CD Series disc as well as from APDA. One little feature of Key Caps which is not widely known is the Control key (not the Command or Option keys). Pressing the Control key in Chicago shows that Control-Q in Chicago maps to the propeller symbol for which you search. Control-Q generates the character code 17; the standard Macintosh character set (see Inside Macintosh Volume VI, page 12-5) specifies this symbol for it.

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