A mnemonic is an underlined
alphanumeric
Alphanumericals or alphanumeric characters are any collection of number characters and letters in a certain language. Sometimes such characters may be mistaken one for the other.
Merriam-Webster suggests that the term "alphanumeric" may often ...
character, typically appearing in a menu title, menu item, or the text of a button or component of the
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...
. A mnemonic indicates to the user which key to press (in conjunction with the Alt key) to activate a command or navigate to a component.
In Microsoft Windows, mnemonics are called "Access keys".
In Web browsers,
Access keys may or may not be engaged by the Alt key.
Using mnemonics is limited to entering the underlined character with a single key stroke; for this reason,
localized versions of software omit letters with diacritics that need to be input via an extra
dead key
A dead key is a special kind of modifier key on a mechanical typewriter, or computer keyboard, that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter (alphabet), letter. The dead key does not generate a (complete) grapheme, charact ...
stroke.
See also
*
Keyboard shortcut
In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...
References
External links
SUN's definition of mnemonic termKeyboard shortcuts and mnemonics or accelerators are not the same thingMnemonics (keyboard) (book)
User interfaces
User interface techniques
Computer keyboards
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