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Both draw an arrow stopped against an upright bar, and the difference is a second bar at the tail.
Count the bars. The tab key's arrow has a bar at the head and another at the tail. The end key's has one, at the head only. Both read as travel arrested at a boundary, which is why they are mistaken for each other on keyboard legends — but tab moves between fields and end jumps to the end of a line.
Both draw an arrow arrested against an upright bar; the tab key's carries a second bar at its tail.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Tab key symbol | End key symbol |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | arrows, lines and dots | arrows |
| Symmetry | horizontal | none |
| Tab key symbol | End key symbol | |
|---|---|---|
| Bars | Two — head and tail | One, at the head |
| What it does | Moves to the next field or tab stop | Jumps to the end of the line |
| Direction | Rightward | Rightward |
| Has a reverse form | Yes, with shift | No |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with End key symbol — Both draw an arrow arrested against an upright bar; the tab key's carries a second bar at its tail. | Commonly confused with Tab key symbol — Both draw an arrow stopping against an upright bar; the tab key's arrow carries a second bar at its tail. |
Unicode Code Chart: Arrows (U+2190–U+21FF)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-07-31
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.