Letters to mom and dad: Use your keyboard shortcuts

This is the first in a series of letters to mom and dad. Many of us have or are parents who are computer literate, but sometimes wish we knew more. This series will explore technology that may be unfamiliar to us.

With the explosion of laptops and netbooks, many of us are tied to a little touch pad to move around our computers. It usually isn’t practical to hook up a mouse even though this makes navigating easier. The alternative is to use your keyboard.

We are still surprised that so few people know the shortcuts for simple tasks such as copying and pasting. We will cover the most common shortcuts and try to cover a few that may be less obvious.

First, what is a keyboard shortcut? It usually involves holding two or more keys are once, although some shortcuts only use a single key.

On Windows based computers, most shortcuts involve holding the control (CTRL) key and the pressing another key in combination. If you are using an Apple computer, then you likely will hold down the Command key. In the past, many of our friends called it the flower key. It looks sort of like a four leaf clover. It also may sometimes have an apple logo on it. On either Windows or Mac OS based computers, the key is usually to the left of your spacebar. Sometimes, you will have more than one Ctrl key on Windows computers.

Let’s get to the meat of this tutorial. From now on, we will use ctrl to describe the shortcut. If you are on an Apple computer, substitute the Apple command key for the Windows ctrl key. We are using the plus symbol to connect the two keys. So, if you see ctrl + c, we want you to hold the ctrl key and the c key at the same time.

Absolutely, MUST know keyboard shortcuts.

All of our copy and paste commands. Obviously, you need to have text selected to use cut and copy.

Ctrl + c: Copy
Ctrl + x: Cut
Ctrl + v: Paste

Some navigation keys

Tab: The tab key will move between controls and will move text to the right in tab increments.
Shift + Tab: This moves backwards through controls and moves text to the left in tab increments.
Ctrl + arrow keys: By holding down the CTRL key and the left or the right arrow, you can skip through sentences, by one word at a time.
Shift: This allows you to select text. If you hold shift with another modifier key(s), you can move through a sentence.
For example, hold Shift and then pressing either the right or left arrow keys will add to or take away letters from a selection
Additionally, hold Shift + ctrl and then pressing your right or left arrow key will add or take away entire words from a selection

Home: Takes you to the beginning of a text line.
Ctrl + home: Takes you to the top of the page and the beginning of the line.

End: Takes you to the end of the line.
Ctrl + End: Takes you to the end of the page and the end of the line.

Some other useful keys

Ctrl + A: Selects all, this might be all text or an entire image.
Ctrl + P: Prints
F1: Open Help. This is the first function key we have covered: Function keys do different things in almost every program. But F1 is usually reserved for accessing Help.

A couple of web browser specific shortcuts

Ctrl + L: Selects all text in the location textbox. This allows you to start typing a new url
Ctrl + E: Jumps to the search Window
Ctrl + Enter: This is an interesting one. If in the location textbox, just type the center portion of your url and the browser will complete the rest.
For example, you want to go to http://www.outlookutilities.com. Simply type, outlookutilities and then hit ctrl + enter. The web browser will fill in the www and com portions for you.

Lastly, if stuck, use your Esc key. It will get you out of most binds. Take the time to learn your shortcuts. They can save a huge amount of time and make your time spent in front of a computer, much more enjoyable.

Check back for future articles in this series.