This is the {{key press}} template, which can be used to illustrate keystrokes. Typographically it works best with examples that are separated from the normal flow of text, e.g. in table cells. It can also be used in lists (as in this page), but it may be a good idea to add an empty line between each list item, so the key borders won't overlap each other.
To illustrate keystroke combinations, just use extra parameters:
{{key press|Alt|P}} produces Alt+P
{{key press|Ctrl|Alt|Del}} produces Ctrl+Alt+Del
This template currently handles up to 5 key name parameters; more then enough to accomodate for any possible combined key stroke. If it gets too many key name parameters it reports the page into Category:Wikipedia keypress template parameter needs fixing. This means we can easily find those pages and fix them, or we can discover if we need to make this template take more parameters.
When you feed several key names to this template, it adds a "+" with no spaces around. This means it won't line wrap. But when you show key combinations for instance in a table then that might cause too wide items. Then instead manually build the key combination with spaces around the "+" so it can line wrap. Like this:
{{key press|Ctrl}} + {{key press|Alt}} + {{key press|Del}} produces Ctrl + Alt + Del
On the other hand, to illustrate Windows Alt codes you might want to use separate templates with no intervening punctuation or space. In most Windows systems in North America and Western Europe, for example, the plus-minus sign (±) can be entered by holding down the Alt key while typing 0177 (with the numeric keypad). This could be illustrated like this:
If you are wikilinking the keys, please ensure that you are piping to the correct page (e.g. [[Control key|Ctrl]] instead of [[Ctrl]], which leads to a disambiguation page).
Some key names have a fitting unicode character. This template automatically adds such "icons" to the following key names:
{{key press|Caps Lock}} produces ⇪ Caps Lock
{{key press|Shift}} produces ⇧ Shift
{{key press|Enter}} produces ↵ Enter
{{key press|Tab}} produces Tab ⇆
{{key press|Backspace}} produces ← Backspace
{{key press|Cmd}} produces ⌘ Cmd
{{key press|Opt}} produces ⌥ Opt
{{key press|Up}} produces ↑
{{key press|Down}} produces ↓
{{key press|Left}} produces ←
{{key press|Right}} produces →
Windows key and Menu keyOld-style Windows key
There are no characters for the Windows key and Menu key. Besides, the Windows logo is trademarked. So this template shows approximate characters for them in the following way:
Video game controllers often have specialized input labels that do not map easily. The following are mappings for various game consoles and input features.
This template calls {{key press/core}}, which holds the code that otherwise would be repeated several times in {{key press}}, thus simplifying the code.
