Thanks, dwig. Brightness is easy for the Dell (less so for me
).
That link was for the blue on-screen keyboard, not the gray-black one that pops up normally (though I couldn't check fully, because those instructions assume navigation via the old Start button, and I didn't find similar options any other way).
I haven't found a way to enhance the standard gray-black keyboard. I don't think it's a localization problem, since the missing key that I need is the simple caret character ("^"). That's partially why my mini-rant. They did the same with Windows Phone, thinking they could leave out standard characters that all the Android keyboards offer. Why would they think that? Is it so hard to have the symbol keyboard have a key that brings up another symbol keyboard? Good luck to the average user.
Anyway, I found that I can successfully enter the "^" character by switching to the handwriting input and inking it.