Q. When I am writing text in an e-mail or in Word I try to correct a typo by moving the mouse to the letter, deleting it and typing the correct letter in. However, when I type the correct letter the next letter in the word is deleted and when I try to replace that deleted letter the next letter is deleted ad nauseum until I am forced to re-write the entire text. What have I done wrong?
A. When you are writing an e-mail or composing a document in Word you are simply editing text. During the process of editing text your keyboard offers you various functionality to make your editing easier.
The most common method of editing text is using the “insert” mode. This mode allows you to move your cursor anywhere in the document and type in new characters and it “inserts” them into the text without overwriting anything else. When you type in new text the existing text is just moved to the right to make room for the new data.
Sometimes it is preferable to the author to move the cursor into the document and have all newly typed text overwrite the existing text using the “delete” mode.
It sounds like you are using the delete method. All you need to do to toggle back is to press the insert key. Once you do that, any new text you type will no longer overwrite the existing text.
If you wish to switch back to the delete method you just press the insert key again and start typing.