Adding mnemonics to menu items is one way of providing the user with keyboard access to menus. You can indicate a mnemonic keystroke for a menu item by preceding a character in the item text with a tilde, as in ~nFile. Then, the user can choose that item by pressing the mnemonic key when the menu is active.

The menu bar is active when the user presses and releases the Alt key, and the first item in the menu bar is highlighted. A pop-up or pull-down menu is active when it is open.