Typing Aids

Typing Aids - Shortcuts

This submenu contains a group of menu commands that are useful short cuts when entering large amounts of text.

These typing aids are provided on a submenu near the bottom of the Text main menu. The accessibility, for quick convenient use, is not ideal. One must keep in mind that this submenu is provided more as a discoverable, reference for the shortcut keys. It is not really intended to be used as a menu element while typing, in most cases a direct mouse action would be more efficient.

Control-D. Forward delete. (Deletes the letter to the right of the insertion point.)

Control-K. Instantly deletes all text from the insertion point to the right end of the line. (Mnemonic: K = Kills the rest of the line.)

Option-Delete. Deletes the entire word to the left of the insertion point. When you're typing along in a hurry, and you discover that you've just made a typo, this is the keystroke you want. It is much faster to nuke the previous word and retype it than to fiddle around with the mouse and the insertion point just to fix one letter.

Insert Line break: Sometimes called "soft return" similar to the <br> in HTML. This will break the line but not cause a new paragraph. Example would be a bullet list with a multi-line entry, the soft return would keep the lines at the indent point and not start the next paragraph. There is no short-cut key assigned, the normal keyboard entry for this action is Shift-Return but this combination of short-cut keys is not allowed on your Mac. However the key combination of Shift - Return is valid and accepted when typing to enter or edit text. Bottom-line all works as expected in most text based applications on other operating systems and many on the Mac.

Control-O. Inserts a paragraph break, much like Return, but leaves the insertion point where it was, above the break. This is the ideal trick for breaking a paragraph in half when you've just thought of a better ending for the first part.

Control-T. Moves the insertion point one letter to the right--and along with it, drags whichever letter was to its left. (Mnemonic: T = Transpose letters.)

Control-B, Control-F. Moves the insertion point one character to the left or right, just like the left and right arrow keys. (Mnemonic: Back, Forward.)

Control-N, Control-P. Moves the insertion point one row down or up, like the down and up arrow keys. (Mnemonic: Next, Previous.)

Control-A. Moves your insertion point to the beginning of the paragraph. (Mnemonic: A = beginning of the alphabet.)

Control-E. Deposits your insertion point at the end of the paragraph. (Mnemonic: E = End.)

The history of these shortcuts goes back to the early days of modern computing when all user interaction with the system was via the keyboard and typing. Their mnemonic and keyboard positioning evolved quickly and as such they are very efficient and are worthy of self training investment if much typing is required by the user.

The shortcut keys defined on this menu are in common use by many macOS and Unix applications. In fact many applications provide the capability without documentation. If one becomes proficient in their use while typing, it is wise to check any macOS, or Unix application for support of these typing conventions.