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Stacked lines meaning 'menu' in two places: one is a control on screen, the other a key you can press.
The hamburger is three plain stacked lines on screen and opens the main navigation. The menu key is a physical key, drawn as a small panel of lines with a pointer beside it, and opens the context menu for whatever is selected — the keyboard equivalent of a right-click. The shared stacked-lines motif is the only thing they have in common.
Both use stacked horizontal lines to stand for a menu; one is a physical keyboard key, the other a control on screen.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Hamburger menu | Menu key symbol |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | lines and dots | squares, lines and dots |
| Symmetry | bilateral | none |
| Hamburger menu | Menu key symbol | |
|---|---|---|
| Physical or on screen | On screen | A key on the keyboard |
| Opens | Main navigation | Context menu for the selection |
| Pointer in the drawing | No | Yes |
| Equivalent to | Tapping a navigation button | Right-clicking |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Menu key symbol — Both use stacked horizontal lines to stand for a menu; one is a physical keyboard key, the other a control on screen. | Commonly confused with Hamburger menu — Both use stacked horizontal lines to stand for a menu; the menu key is a physical keyboard key, the hamburger a touch target on screen. |
Unicode Code Chart: Miscellaneous Symbols (U+2600–U+26FF)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-07-30
Authoritative for the character's code point, name and block only. Unicode assigns identity; it does not define what a symbol means in use.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-07-31
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity and origin summary, not for contested detail or exact dates.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-01
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity, origin and current use, not for contested detail or exact dates.
Both are drawn as one continuous decorative stroke with a closed loop and a tail that crosses back over itself, which is why a description of the shape alone reaches both. The clef is far taller, spans a stave, and its spiral encircles one specific line — that encircled line is the note G, and it is the only reason the shape is drawn where it is.
The ampersand is a ligature of the Latin word et, still visible in some italic forms where the e and the t can be picked out. The Tironian et is a separate mark descending from a Roman shorthand, shaped like a small seven, and it is in daily public use in Ireland as the written form of 'agus'. A reader who knows only the ampersand takes the other for a numeral, which on a bilingual road sign produces a confidently wrong place name.
A building's assembly point is a safe place to stand once you are outside. A ship's muster station is a staffed step in a procedure: you are counted against a roll, briefed, and if necessary allocated to a survival craft, which is why it has a letter or a number and appears on your cabin door card. Both are green, both show grouped figures, and both are called an assembly point in ordinary speech — and treating a muster station as somewhere merely to wait is the misunderstanding drills exist to correct.
As punctuation the asterisk points at a footnote or marks a required field. In a filename pattern typed at a shell it matches any run of characters, including none — and the shell expands it against real filenames before the command runs, so the command never sees the pattern at all. That expansion is the part people are surprised by.