Should keys represented with <kbd> tags be always uppercase?

Question

Should keys represented with <kbd> tags be always uppercase?

In this edit to "Delete from cursor to end of line in vi" d$ was changed into D$. I thought the answer was incorrect since d and D commands are different in Vi; I had to read the edit note by AdminBee to understand the reason for the change, namely

Keys are labelled uppercase, so "uppercase D" should be "Shift"-"D" in tags.

Although it makes sense, I think it does more harm than good. I want to roll it back, but first I'd like to invite more opinions.

Answer 1

In this case, definitely no. In particular, showing a command as DW is misleading; D already does something different than dw.

Also, vi is a terminal program, it doesn't see keypresses as such, only characters. It doesn't care if you use Caps Lock instead of Shift to get the uppercase D, so presenting the command as Shift+D is beside the point too.

I took the liberty of editing the answer. The original didn't have the <kbd> tags either.

That said, I would write ^D Ctrl-D Ctrl+D Ctrl+D and such with an uppercase D, because uppercase letters are somewhat easier to tell apart, and I think it's commonly understood that something like that doesn't involve Shift. Also I'm pretty sure Caps Lock doesn't usually affect that use.

_{(Of course someone could make weirder changes to their keymap, as in arrange for Ctrl+A to send a ^Z instead, but that's likely to be rather unusual.)}

Answer 2

Should keys represented with <kbd> tags be always uppercase?

No — they should probably represent the exact case that is needed for the function. Where it could be confusing (i vs I vs l vs L and o vs O vs 0), it might be worth a parenthetical to spell out the letter.

Answer 3

I agree with @ilkkachu's answer that in this case, the original typesetting of the answer using "code" formatting rather than "keystrokes" makes more sense, and my edit should probably have been to revert to that typesetting. Still, we need to find a consistent style on how to represent keystrokes.

I have the impression (but cannot back it up with statistical evidence) that a widely accepted convention - which in particular novices will have often seen - is that a key combination statement written as Ctrl+C means to press the "Control" key and then the "c" key without shift, and if a "Shift" key were needed, write this as Ctrl+Shift+C, and that this is the case because on many keyboards, the keys are labelled upper-case. So, I would vote in favor of this representation when expressing key combinations as used in keyboard shortcuts, but not when it comes to entering commands on text entry prompts as in vi or less.

A similar problem is the representation of "key strokes" vs. "key chords", i.e. how to distinguish a key combination where the keys have to be pressed simultaneously (or the later ones at least while the former ones are still down) from a combination where one of the keys has to be released before the later keys are pressed. One could think about using Ctrl-X to mean one thing and Ctrl+X to mean the other thing, but again a consensus is needed for which means which.

Or, we could opt to remove the keystroke typesetting altogether and adopt the notation used in the Emacs documentation (although - as also noted by @Quasimodo in a comment - it is not easy to understand for people inexperienced with Emacs, which likely make up a majority of possible readers).