When typing thing on your computer there is nothing worse than having to take your fingers off the keyboard to do something with your mouse, whether it is deleting a few words, highlighting some text to perform some formatting or having to move your cursor to a different place within the text. These distractions, where the hand leaves the keyboard, slow down productivity. Luckily there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts for text editing which we will go over to hopefully help make your typing a lot more productive. Once you’ve managed to master these shortcuts you’ll find that you are composing documents, emails, etc in a lot less time.
The following keyboard shortcuts can be used to highlight text a lot more easily than taking your fingers off the keyboard and using the mouse/trackpad.
Highlight one character at a time - Shift+Left or Right Arrow
Highlight one line at a time - Shift+Up or Down Arrow Keys
Highlight one word with each arrow press - Shift+Ctrl+Left or Right Arrow
Highlight the current paragraph - Shift+Ctrl+Up or Down Arrow
Highlight text between the cursor’s current position and the end of the current line - Shift+Home
Highlight text between the cursor’s current position and the end of the current line - Shift+End
Highlight all text - Ctrl+A
Use the following keyboard shortcuts to help you edit text more quickly and efficiently.
Copy selected text - Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Insert
Cut selected text - Ctrl+X or Shift+Delete
Paste text at the cursor - Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert
Undo last action - Ctrl+Z
Redo last action - Ctrl+Y
The shortcuts below can be used by either pressing the shortcuts and then typing what you want to be bold, italic, etc, then pressing the shortcut again to deactivate. You can also highlight text and then use the shortcut to format that piece of highlighted text.
Make text bold - Ctrl+B
Make text italicized - Ctrl+I
Underline selected text - Ctrl+U
Moving The Cursor
Moving the cursor to a different location doesn’t have to involve you pressing the right or left arrow a load of times, there are plenty of keyboard shortcuts to make this easier. On a Mac you’ll need to play around with the keys a little to find the right shortcut (sometimes on a Mac you’ll need to use the Alt key instead of Ctrl).
Move to beginning of current line - Home
Move to end of current line - End
Move to top of text entry field - Ctrl+Home
Move to bottom of the text entry field - Ctrl+End
Move up one frame - Page Up
Move down one frame - Page Down
Move to beginning of paragraph - Ctrl+Up Arrow
Move to end of paragraph - Ctrl+Down Arrow
Working With Whole Words
Use these keyboard shortcuts when working with whole words.
Move to start of previous word - Ctrl+Left Arrow
Move to start of next word - Ctrl+Right Arrow
Delete previous word - Ctrl+Backspace
Delete next word - Ctrl+Delete