Included with Mac OS X is the Key Caps application (located in /Applications/Utilities), which is a keyboard widget that allows you to see which character would be created by applying the Shift, Option, or Shift-Option keys to any key on the keyboard. Key Caps also allows you to copy and paste the character you create into another application, such as Microsoft Word.
While this might seem useful, it can be a hassle to launch another
app just to create one character and copy and paste it into another
program. Fortunately, one of the most little-known/-used features of
the Mac OS is its ability to give you the same functionality within
any application—making Key Caps unnecessary if you know what
you're doing. Table 5-1 lists
these special characters. Keep in mind that this
doesn't work for all font types, and some fonts such
as Symbol, Wingdings, and Zapf Dingbats create an entirely different
set of characters or symbols. For example, to create the symbol for
the Command key ( ), you would need to
switch the font to Wingdings and type a lowercase
z.