Young Writers Society

When writing about keyboard/controller buttons would you have to capitalise the word?

Eg:

Tapping the ‘Send’ button [...] Aethel pressed ‘Forward’.

Or does it not matter?

Haha, that's a good question. I think I would capitalize it, because all the word buttons on a keyboard are capitalized and 'Send' is the buttons name--proper name? I don't know. I just think it makes sense to capitalize

Hello Myth -


I've seen it written both ways, in more than one book. But I rather think capitalisation would be more correct; it also will make it stand out, as a key, not merely another word in the sentence. ^_^



IMP

I've never used keyboard functions in a story-story, but when I've seen them used in technical manuals (like a how-to guide for a calculator), the key in question is written [in brackets], so "the shift key" is written as [shift].

However, a send button and forward button aren't normally keys on a keyboard ... I would go with lowercase, because they aren't proper nouns, although now that I think about it, the words on the buttons are capitalized ... so I was really no help what-so-ever.

edit: wait, now that I think about it, the keys in [brackets] are usually capitalized, so I would go with capitalizing them, even if they aren't in [brackets].

I think it really doesn't matter. Use whatever is easiest.

I don't think that anyone is going to lookt hat closely.