Why use@ ! ^ ® symbols in context names

[mrrosenthal85]

The template I'm using has the following context symbols
@ for locations
® For routine
+ For inbox contexts
! For dashboard

Is there any GTD specification and mental benefit for using these symbols? How about any MLO benefits. I know you can search and filter by symbol but I can't imagine that being useful considering the large number of contexts each symbol has in my template.

[Stéph]

I do the same. I don't think there's a particular specification for what symbols to use for what purpose, other than that some other apps (Twitter, Microsoft Teams, etc) have particular meanings for @ and # tags.

My tags are:

@context

?person's name (especially if I've delegated something to them or it's a note of the person I need to call)

&Role

+Project Name

I find those tags are quite useful if I'm searching for a keyword and I need to filter down the list of search results (eg if I only want to find the branch of tasks under a particular +Project, rather than other notes which just happen to refer to the project name).

[Alyona (MLO Support)]

The “@” symbol is necessary so that MLO recognizes that the word after @ is a context when parsing the input.