Shortcuts

You can tell shortcuts by the little arrow on the icon.

To create a shortcut to a file just right click on a file/folder and by keeping that right click down drag the file to where you want the shortcut to be e.g. the desktop.
Then when you let the right click go you will get the option (copy here, move here, create shortcut here) chose shortcut. You can safely delete a shortcut, as they are only links to the files.
Or right click on the file/folder and Send to Desktop (create shortcut).