TCOM 2010 – Technical Writing

Important MS Word Skills


Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows


Moving the Cursor

Ctrl+R/L Arrow: Beginning of current/start of next word

Ctrl+Up/Down Arrow: Beginning of current/start of next paragraph

Ctrl+Home: Top of entire document

Ctrl+End: End of entire document

Selecting Text

Shift+R/L Arrow: Select single letter

Ctrl+Shift+R/L Arrow: Select to beginning/end of word

Shift+Up/Down Arrow: Select all to new location of cursor

Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down Arrow: Select rest of paragraph to beginning/end

Ctrl+A: Select all

Correcting Errors

Ctrl+F: Find

Ctrl+H: Replace

Ctrl+Z: Undo

Ctrl+Y: Redo

Formatting Dashes

Keyboard or Keypad (-):Hyphen

Ctrl+Keypad(-): En dash

Ctrl+Alt+Keypad(-): Em dash

Formatting Text

Ctrl+I: Italicize

Ctrl+B: Bold

Ctrl+U: Underline

Ctrl+D: Open font menu

Moving Text

Ctrl+C: Copy

Ctrl+X: Cut

Ctrl+V: Paste

Managing Documents

Ctrl+S: Save

Alt+F, A: Save As

Ctrl+O: Open

Ctrl+N: New document

Ctrl+P: Print

Selecting Open Documents

Alt+Tab: Switch between windows

Ctrl+Tab: Switch between tabs


Using Styles

Changing fonts and font sizes

Changing spacing inside paragraphs

Changing spacing between paragraphs

Creating new styles

Changing indentations


Using Headers and Footers

Inserting header and footer text

Inserting page numbers

Suppressing first page headers and footers

Starting numbering on different pages


Various Useful Tips

Setting tabs

Inserting page and section breaks

Switching upper/lower case