For our first posting on keyboard shortcuts, we are going to present some really basic ones. We don’t want to jump ahead (as much as we’d really enjoy doing that), so this list may seem a bit rudimentary, but that’s our intent. Even folks who’ve used computers for years may have not seen all these, so pay attention—you may actually learn something.
Moving around:
- Right one character – Right Arrow
- Left one character – Left Arrow
- Down one line – Down Arrow
- Up one line – Up Arrow
- Beginning of current line – Home
- End of current line – End
- Beginning of document – Ctrl+Home
- End of document – Ctrl+End
- Right one word – Ctrl+Right Arrow
- Left one word – Ctrl+Left Arrow
- Beginning of next paragraph – Ctrl+Down Arrow
- Beginning of previous paragraph – Ctrl+Up Arrow
The next group would involve selecting text, but instead of listing them all again, I’ll just point out that if you hold Shift and use any of the above, you’ll select the text as you move across it.
Now then, here are a few useful ones for moving large distances throughout your document. (Where there is more than one option for keystrokes, I’ve underlined the one I prefer, but you are welcome to develop any habits you find convenient.)
- Cycle through the last four edit locations – Shift+F5 or Ctrl+Alt+Z
- Go to Find field in Navigation pane – Ctrl+F
- Next find (after doing find) – Ctrl+Page Down
- Previous find (after doing find) – Ctrl+Page Up
- Display Find and Replace dialog with Find (advanced) tab selected – Ctrl+H, Alt+D
- Display Find and Replace dialog with Replace tab selected – Ctrl+H
- Display Find and Replace dialog with Go To tab selected – Ctrl+G or F5
Cutting (and pasting)
We’ll cover how to use the Spike in a later post.
- Delete one character to left – Backspace
- Delete one character to the right – Delete
- Delete one word to left – Ctrl+Backspace
- Delete one word to right – Ctrl+Delete
- Copy text to clipboard – Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Insert
- Cut text to clipboard – Ctrl+X or Shift+Delete
- Paste text from clipboard – Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert
Formatting characters:
- Bold – Ctrl+B
- Italics – Ctrl+I
- Underline – Ctrl+U
- Underline words only – Ctrl+Shift+W
- Double-underline – Ctrl+Shift+D
- Superscript – Ctrl+Shift+Plus Sign
- Subscript – Ctrl+Equal Sign
- Uppercase – Ctrl+Shift+A
- Change case – Shift+F3 (cycles through upper, lower, sentence/title)
- Small Caps – Ctrl+Shift+K
- Increase font by 1 point – Ctrl+[
- Decrease font by 1 point – Ctrl+]
- Increase font one preset size – Ctrl+Shift+ >
- Decrease font one preset size – Ctrl+Shift+<
Formatting paragraphs:
- Single line spacing – Ctrl+1
- 1.5 line spacing – Ctrl+5
- Double line spacing – Ctrl+2
- Left align – Ctrl+L
- Right align – Ctrl+R
- Center align – Ctrl+E
- Justify – Ctrl+J
- Heading 1 style – Ctrl+Alt+1
- Heading 2 style – Ctrl+Alt+2
- Heading 3 style – Ctrl+Alt+3
- Bulleted list – Ctrl-Shift-L
That’ll have to do for now. We’ll get into more interesting (and useful) shortcuts later.