Every card on this site ends in one or two buttons. Each button has a verb on it. Read on. Skip to status. Back to work. The verb is a promise about what the next card contains.

When I sit down to write a card, the button is what I write last, and writing it is the moment I find out whether the card was any good. If I can't write a clean verb — if I have to write something like "More" or "Continue" or "Click here" — the card hasn't done its job. The card is supposed to earn the next card.

In HyperCard you literally drew the button on the card with a tool. It was a graphic. Bill Atkinson knew what we forgot: a button is a piece of writing.