Do you have the UK / US - Keyboard installed? They are to the right of the 'p'- key

I may have gotten you wrong, Joshua: I thought you were talking about the square brackets when you said " square symbol" in your above post.

What key exactly you can't find?

I use "Help" a lot. Searching with "key shortcut" will give you links to Notebook Shortcuts, Selecting and Typing in Notebooks, etc., which you may find useful.

On the English keyboard (which is somewhat different to the US Keyboard) you get "^" with Shift 6 (number 6, not function 6) - unless you have a Mac, in which case I can't help.

When you start Mathematica, you get command Tabs starting with File, Edit, Insert, etc. to the extreme right there is Help, which has a search function.

I am not familiar with Wolfram Alpha, being a "beginning beginner" myself ..

Shift + 6 for "^" is actually the way your keyboard is installed. It should be displayed on the 6-key, however. What symbol do you have above the 6?

I suggest you hold down the Shift key down and press all the keys on your keyboard in turn, taking note of what gets displayed. Then the same with the Alt key.