Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Text Editing

This post was originally posted on Debiprasad’s Techno Expressions

Today I read a blog Keyboard Shortcut to Jump Over Words. This reminded me to post all the similar shortcuts I am using while editing any text or code.

To move by words
To move by words hold down Ctrl key, and press left arrow to move towards left or right arrow to move towards right.

To move to the first or last character of the file or text area
To move to the first character of the file or text area, use the combination Ctrl + Home. Similarly to move to the last character of the file or text area, use the combination Ctrl + End.

You can add Shift key to these combination to select text faster. Generally when you hold down Shift and press right or left arrows then the text got selected character wise and if you press up or down arrows, it selects line wise.

To select text word by word
To select text word by word, hold down Shift and Crtl, then press left or right arrow.

To select text to the first/last character (home/end) from a point
To select text from a point to the start character (Home) of the line, use Shift + Home. Similarly, to select text from a point to the last character (End) of the line, use Shift + End.

To select all text from a point to the start/end of file or text area
To select all text from a point to the start of file or text area, use Shift + Ctrl + Home. Similarly, to select all text from a point to the end of file or text area, use Shift + Ctrl + End

This shortcuts work in most of the text editors, rich text editors and Text Area and text input of a web page html form. However jumping by words or part of a string separated by . (dot), _ (underscore) and /, \ (slashes) behave differently in different editors.

I am using this since a long time, but did not learned it from somewhere, hope this will be useful.

Image credit: Fickr – ahhyeah – Keyboard Blue Glow