Car makers try all kinds of options with gear shifters. There can be levers, buttons(physical or on-screen), dials/knobs or no gear selector at all - like the predictive system in Tesla Model S Plaid.

But one thing remains common in all of them.

The letters PRND is ubiquitous for those who drive a vehicle with automatic transmission. Park-Reverse-Neutral-Drive is the sequence of the shift pattern found in almost all of the automatic transmission shifters today. Sometimes PRND can be followed by one more gear which is either ‘L’(low), ‘S’ (Sport), or ‘M’ (Manual), but the general sequence is the same.

Driving is universal, people do it on every part of the world and most of the countries have adopted common road signs (Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals). But whether it's left hand driven or right hand driven, manufactured in Japan or Korea, uses different kind of shifters, the letters PRND will still indicate the gear you are in.

During the last holidays after spending some days on road driving my car I began to feel like showing the plain Latin letters (PRND) beside my gear shifter didn't convey significance right upfront. Knowing the right gear and selecting it at the right time is crucial when you are in your vehicle. I know that after getting used to the gear shifters, for most of the time we don't even look at them, we simply know them by their position, engine noise or some indication on the dashboard. Even I was like that but at some point when I looked at these plain letters I felt like for all these years we took them for granted.

May be because I was born and raised in the Walkman/VCR era I wished there was at least a slight indication beside the plain letters about what they will do.

Imagine a set of buttons indicated with plain letters or just symbols or symbols and a proper label about their function. Which is more helpful? Of course the last one with proper symbol and label.

This clarity is being lost when we are indicating the gears with just plain letters. Another issue is the "Latin" letters. A native Korean or Arabic speaking driver has to memorize the Latin letters and also their function. Another aspect is colors. I have seen some of the shifters with red color or downward arrow to indicate the reverse gear but usually nothing else to indicate the other gears. I feel that indicating gears with colors is more affirmative and helpful since you don't have to "read" the letter to know which gear you are in.

2021 Ford F-150 Raptor gear lever with symbols(right)

2018 Lincoln Navigator gear buttons with symbols(right)