mnemonics (keyboard)

{{Short description|Designated character in a GUI to jump directly to or activate a widget}}

{{RefImprove|date=February 2018}}Image:Firefoxshortcuts.png menu with shortcuts highlighted with green and mnemonics highlighted with yellow.]]

A mnemonic is an underlined alphanumeric character, typically appearing in a menu title, menu item, or the text of a button or component of the user interface. 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".{{Cite web|url=https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn742464(v=vs.85).aspx|title=Accessibility (Windows)|website=msdn.microsoft.com|language=en|access-date=2018-02-28}} 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 stroke.