by Kris Traughber
When it comes to anything besides simple typing, most people depend on their mouse to do just about everything on their computer. However, you can speed up your productivity while typing with a few keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts allow you to move between and highlight words and letters without taking your hands off the keyboard. This is something that comes in very handy for programmers but is equally useful for anyone. I use it every day.
These shortcuts are for Windows users only but they apply to almost every single place you can type text on your computer. The shortcuts below are just for navigating text, but Windows has many other shortcuts for navigating application menus and Windows itself, which we won’t get into here. (Note that Apple has similar shortcuts to do most of the same things. However, during my time as a Mac user, I found the Mac version of these shortcuts to be more difficult to use. I have navigated text with the keyboard for so long that this was a major factor in me going back to Windows. Just my opinion.)
Here are just a few shortcuts:
| Ctrl + Right or Left Arrow | Move from one word to the next |
| Ctrl + Shift + Right or Left Arrow | Highlight entire words one at a time. |
| Ctrl + Home | Move to the beginning of the document or page. |
| Ctrl + End | Move to the end of the document or page. |
| Ctrl + Shift + Home | Highlight from the cursor to the beginning of the document. |
| Ctrl + Shift + End | Highlight from the cursor to the end of the document. |
| Ctrl + Backspace | Delete from cursor to beginning of the word. |
| Shift + Right or Left Arrow | Highlight one character at a time starting from your cursor. |
| Shift + Up or Down Arrow | Highlight one line at a time starting from your cursor. |
| Shift + Home | Highlight from the cursor to the beginning of the current line. |
| Shift + End | Highlight from the cursor to the end of the current line. |
Try these yourself in the text box below.