Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

Funny thing about shortcuts: If you try to manage too many of them they lose their primary purpose; that is to be shortcuts…

Anyway, I was reminded of three very useful text and text selection shortcuts recently.

The first is to do with deleting individual works. When you’re most of the way through typing a word and you realize that you’re spelling it wrong—press Opt-Delete and the whole word deletes in one stroke.

The second is to do with clicking to select words. If you double click a word the whole word is selected. If you triple click a word then the whole paragraph is selected; if you select a word and delete it—the word and one of the spaces on either side is deleted—you don’t need to carefully wipe over the word and a space.

Finally, if you double-click a word and hold the mouse button down on the second click, you can then wipe to select that word along with other whole words.

One last thing I rediscovered while typing this: If you’re typing in a text field that doesn’t normally support spell checking while you type—press Cmd-Shift-; to bring up a traditional spell checking box.