However, one thing I’ve never understood is the decision to use an anchor element to cancel an open reply box. I’m far more accustomed to the reddit style of placing a cancel button next to the submit button, like this:

The problem with the anchor element generated by Wordpress is that it looks really out of place when arranged next to the “submit comment” button. I had hoped there would be a parameter to change the anchor element into a button, but was disappointed to find that this particular HTML is hardcoded into the get_cancel_comment_reply_link() function.

However, the function does provide a filter hook, which I’ve used to make the change I desired. I simply intercept the HTML and return my own version with a button. It’s not very elegant, but it works.

If you’d like to use this hack, just add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

/**
 * Use an HTML button element for the cancel comment reply link.
 */
function cancel_comment_reply_button($html, $link, $text) {
    $style = isset($_GET['replytocom']) ? '' : ' style="display:none;"';
    $button = '<button id="cancel-comment-reply-link"' . $style . '>';
    return $button . $text . '</button>';
}
 
add_action('cancel_comment_reply_link',
           'cancel_comment_reply_button', 10, 3);