Hotkey  (Definition)

An underlined character on a menu item or dialog box control that allows the user to access the item or control by pressing that character's key (alone or together with another key) on the keyboard.
In the case of dialog controls, the user may have to hold down the ALT key before pressing the hotkey.  Hotkeys are sometimes referred to as shortcut keys, access keys, or mnemonic keys.

Figure 1: Example of a File menu where each menu item has a hotkey (underlined letters) specified.

Figure 2: Example of a dialog box where each item has a hotkey (nderlined letters) specified.

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