Thursday, 02 December 2021 12:00

Southern SIG report: on using MS Word shortcuts to boost productivity

Written by Jasper Pauwels

Shortcuts

As a professional wordsmith, you of course know what shortcuts are. You are probably using some in your daily work, like CTRL+S to save your work or CTRL+Z to undo whatever you shouldn’t have done. Chances are that you have considered the many more out there that you should be using.

Indeed, you really want to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, because they help you work more quickly, make your work easier and they reduce the risk of RSI from swinging that mouse around. No wonder most software programs include many handy shortcuts – Microsoft Word alone includes over 200 of them. But memorizing hundreds of shortcuts is quite a daunting task, so how do you know which ones are really worth remembering?

Luckily, Linda Comyns was so kind as to explain which Word shortcuts she finds most useful as a translator, an editor and a teacher. Attendees of this online SENSE event were encouraged to try out the different shortcuts in their own files and they were exuberant about their new editing superpowers. Below are my personal favourites:

I was delighted by the discovery that I can move to the next word to the left or to the right of the cursor or move up or down a paragraph using CTRL+arrow keys. That is decidedly easier than moving one character or one line at a time without the CTRL key. Similarly, Shift+CTRL+arrow keys will select words or paragraphs in the desired direction. When I try to select bits of texts with my mouse, I usually ended up selecting more or fewer words than I intended. Using Shift+CTRL+arrow keys to select the text before cutting (CTRL+X) and pasting (CTRL+V) it are real timesavers for me.

If you need to do a lot of formatting in Word, you will find CTRL+B, CTRL+I and CTRL+U very helpful to put words in bold, italics or to underline them. Removing all the manual formatting could not be easier than hitting CTRL+Spacebar. Do you need a heading? ALT+CTRL+1/2/3 will apply heading style 1, 2 or 3 in no time.

Naturally, you can do all these things with your mouse, but once you get the hang of it, using the mouse suddenly feels very cumbersome indeed. Although a few shortcuts are fairly universal, not all of these will work across Office applications or on other operating systems. Mac users can try the Command or Alt key, press Shift+Command or look up the Mac-specific keyboard shortcuts they need.

I was not the only attendee who learnt something new that day; many members and non-members got excited about these new ways of working. Some members even spontaneously shared their own favourite productivity tips.

Of course, we could not possibly round off a Southern SIG meeting without appointing the southern-most attendee as Southern SIG Member of the Month. This highly coveted honour was bestowed on Nina Woodson this time, who joined us from Los Angeles, USA – congratulations, Nina!

Read 1405 times Last modified on Friday, 02 September 2022 22:30

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