Question

I’m trying to do this

(global-set-key (kbd "s-up") 'beginning-of-buffer)

and I get this error

error "s- must prefix a single character, not up"

How do I tell it to do this?

Answer 1

Named keys should be written in angle brackets like this:

(kbd "s-<up>")

The exceptions to this are RET, SPC, TAB, DEL, LFD, ESC, and NUL, which must be in uppercase. See the documentation for edmacro-mode (C-h f edmacro-mode) for a more complete explanation of the syntax kbd accepts.

Also note that the s- prefix is for the super modifier, and S- is for shift.