LCD display showing strange symbols

[stupendousthoughts]

Hi, I've been working for a couple days on a project to make code that can translate button presses in Morse code into letters, then show them on my LCD display.

I first tried this on a physical board, but I wasn't sure if it was a hardware issue, so I did it on a virtual one as well and got the exact same response.

Please let me know if there's anything I can improve upon or do to have the LCD show the blank screen on boot-up.

Here is a link to the virtual project, it is exactly the same as my physical setup:
https://wokwi.com/projects/385643983515875329

Also, feel free to disregard the comments, they are just helpful for me.

[david_2018]

          lcd.write("?");

For a single character with write(), use single quotes

          lcd.write('?');

or use print()

          lcd.print("?");

Also, I don't think the simulation will ever work. You have the button input pin mode set to INPUT_PULLUP, and the button wired to 5 volts, there is no way the input could ever be LOW.

[stupendousthoughts]

Thank you for the helpful advice. How could I rewire the button using INPUT_PULLUP so that it would work?

[jremington]

Wire the button from input to GND. digitalRead() will return LOW when the button is pushed.

[stupendousthoughts]

It looks like that has done something, now the LCD shows this screen when the code runs: