Keyboard shortcuts in a word processor
Keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word as of 2008 are of three kinds that behave differently: keys that open a menu, Ctrl shortcuts and hot keys. Beyond the common functions, shortcuts type the special characters a medical writer or editor often uses, such as the dashes and the non-breaking space, and they move through a document and select text without the mouse.
Kinds of shortcut
In Word as of 2008, once users know the commands in the pulldown menus, many are eager to use the built-in shortcuts, which open a menu or perform a function more quickly and smoothly with a couple of keystrokes in place of moving the cursor and clicking the mouse. As of 2018, keyboard shortcuts are either built in, customised, or used to access recorded macros. As of 2008, the menu, Ctrl, hot-key, special-character and navigational shortcuts of Word for personal computers do not apply to Word for Macintosh computers.
In Word as of 2008, a pulldown menu opens when Alt is pressed with the letter underlined in the menu's name: Alt+E, for example, opens the Edit menu. A shortcut with the Ctrl key, such as Ctrl+P for print, is shown to the right of its command in the open menu and works even when the menus are not open. Hot keys work only while a menu is open: with the Edit menu open, pressing B, the letter underlined in Clipboard, displays the contents of the clipboard.
As of 2008, Word can print a list of all the shortcuts currently assigned to functions, which is especially useful to a writer who wants to reassign shortcut keys to the functions they use most often. The instructions are in Word's help under "Print a list of shortcut keys".
Ctrl shortcuts for common functions
Ctrl shortcuts in Word as of 2008 include Ctrl+C for copy, Ctrl+V for paste, Ctrl+Z for undo, Ctrl+P for print, Ctrl+S for saving the file, Ctrl+B for bold, Ctrl+I for italics, Ctrl+U for underline, Ctrl+R for right alignment and Ctrl+L for left alignment. As of 2018, cutting, copying and pasting text take Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V on Windows, with the Command key in place of Control on a Macintosh. In the experience of the two authors of a survey of medical writers, a colleague or student who has been shown these shortcuts rarely resorts to the mouse for these functions afterward.
Shortcuts for special characters
Medical writers and editors use the symbols and special characters of the Insert Symbol dialog so often that their shortcuts are especially helpful. In Word as of 2008, the dialog itself shows a symbol's shortcut: when the symbol is highlighted in the list, an existing shortcut key appears to the right of the Shortcut Key button. The Esc key closes that dialog and others. Four of these shortcuts as of 2008 are Alt+Ctrl+Num Lock with the hyphen on the number keypad for an em dash, Ctrl+Num Lock with the same hyphen for an en dash, Ctrl+Shift+spacebar for a required space, and Alt+Ctrl+period for an ellipsis. In 2014, a writer who teaches courses on Word gives Ctrl with the minus key on the numeric keypad as the way to insert an en dash manually.
As of 2014, Ctrl+Shift+spacebar also enters, while typing, the non-breaking space that binds a unit to its value so that an automatic line break does not separate them. In 2008, a correspondent of a usage column holds that there is no need to bother with the octothorp for thin spaces, since they use Control-Shift-spacebar in Word for a space that is thin and nonbreaking, exactly what mathematical signs and units need.
Shortcuts for moving through a document and selecting text
Navigational shortcuts combine one or more main keys with either a direction key, which sits to the right of the main keys, or one of the 12 function keys in the row above them. In Word as of 2008, Shift+F5, for "go back", helps find the previous location in the text, and one writer counts it among their favourite navigational shortcuts. As of 2008, Ctrl+End goes to the end of the document and Ctrl+Home to its start, Ctrl with an arrow key moves the cursor forward or back one word, and Ctrl+Delete and Ctrl+Backspace delete the word to the right and to the left of the cursor. Pressing Shift with Ctrl+End, Ctrl+Home or Ctrl and an arrow key selects the text before or after the cursor. Word's help in 2008 covers selecting text under the topics "Select text and graphics by using the mouse" and "Select text by using the keyboard".