Caret

Also called hat or circumflex.

How to type it

Right index finger with Shift.

Common uses

• On calculators and in plain text, a caret shows a power, so 2^3 means 2 to the third power.
• Proofreaders use a caret mark to show where a missing word or letter belongs.

Less common uses

• In regular expressions, ^ matches the start of a string or line.
• Terminals write Control key combinations with a caret, so ^C means Control + C.
• The word caret is Latin for it is missing, which is how the proofreading mark got its name.
• In some languages, ^ is the bitwise exclusive-or operator rather than a power.