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When indicating valid key modifier combinations to users, is there a "correct" or normative order in which to describe them? For instance, if you wanted the user to press shift and control and alt and then press the F3 key, how would you write that:
SHIFT+ALT+CTRL+F3
ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+F3
CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+F3
?
Looking at the examples in Microsoft's guidelines for keyboard user interface design the order is:
CTRL - ALT - SHIFT - [key]
This is consistent with the OS X Human Interface Guidelines, which explicitly state that the correct order is
Control, Option, Shift, Command.
I'm not sure there is a "Correct" way of writing this (though as Marielle's answer points out there is a conventional way), but to me there certainly seems to be intuitive ways. One possibility is to write the modifier keys in the order of the finger generally used to press that key (left to right). Control is generally pressed by the pinky (little) finger, so it would appear first, pinky being the leftmost finger on the left hand. Shift is the ring finger if Control is already pressed, so it would come second. Should both Control and shift be pressed, then Alt may likely be pressed by the thumb. So we get:
Control (pinky) + Shift (ring finger) + Alt (thumb) + key (last by default)
Regardless of what order you decide to place the modifier keys in, the key being modified should always appear last. Think of it as a noun, and the modifiers as adjectives.
Of course, if you've got a shortcut that requires 3 modifiers at once, I feel you may need to do some reworking. It's awkward to perform, and there are surely more than enough 2 modifier combinations available should you run out of single modifier shortcuts that make sense.
I'd say it's CTRL, SHIFT, ALT.
Looking at the link @Marielle posted, I see no evidence for CTRL, ALT, SHIFT. Did I overlook something or did the docs change since the answer was posted in 2014?
Anyway, when making keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio Code using all modifiers, it comes out as Ctrl+Shift+Alt+... Since this is a Microsoft product, it's an indication of their recommended order.
If anyone has any more tangible documentation on this, I'd also like to know.
