Mac Keyboard Commands For Writers

When you are writing on your Mac, you don't want to have to take your fingers off the keyboard to move the cursor or select text. There are a variety of keyboard commands you can learn to make it easy to move the cursor by letter, word, line or paragraph, delete characters or words, and make selections.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at using the keyboard to move the text cursor and select text while writing.
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So when you're writing you typically don't want to lift your hands off of your keyboard to use the mouse. It's important to know how to manipulate the text cursor to move around in your document and to be able to select text. You probably know the basics but I bet you don't know all of the keyboard shortcuts that you could use.
The regular cursor is the thing that you move around the screen with the mouse. The text cursor is the blinking line that you see when you're writing text either in Pages, TextEdit, Microsoft Word, and email, or a form on a website. Whatever. To move the text cursor around of course you can click with the mouse. But you can also use the keyboard. The basic keys for moving the cursor are the arrow keys. So the right arrow moves the cursor forward by one at a time. The left arrow moves it backward. The down arrow will move it down one line at a time. The up arrow will move it up.
Now you can use modifier keys to do different things. So let's start with the Option key. The Option key allows you to move by words. I'm going to use the Option key with the right arrow and you'll see it will jump by word each time. The left arrow will do it but in the opposite direction. Now you can also move by paragraph using the Option key and the up and down arrows. So Option down moves to the end of the next paragraph. Option up will move to the beginning of the paragraph and continue to move by paragraph.
Now the Command key can also be used as a modifier with the arrows. So Command and the right arrow moves to the end of the current line. Command and the left arrow moves to the beginning of the current line. Command down will move to the end of the document and Command up will move to the beginning of the document.
Now the other modifier key that changes how the arrow keys work is the fn key. On most Mac keyboards you'll find it at the bottom left corner. Some of the larger Mac keyboards you'll actually find it near the Home key. Now fn with the right arrow will scroll to the end of the document. It's like going to the end of the document but you see it actually move. The fn and the left arrow will scroll up to the beginning of the document. fn and the up and down arrow will do it by screen. So I go down by screen and I can go up by screen. So how much it jumps really depends on how much text you see in the window.
Now if you want to select text all you need to do is add the Shift key to any of these. For instance if I hold the Shift key down and do the right arrow it will not just move the cursor but select everything in its path. If I were to use the left arrow it will select going backwards. If I add the Option key to that it will do it by word. So I can select by word using Option and Shift. All of the other modifications of the arrow keys I showed you will also work to select text if you just hold down the Shift key.
Now if you want to delete text, of course, you use the Delete key on your keyboard. But some people like to delete in the opposite direction. So if you wanted to go and Forward delete all you need to do is hold the fn key down and delete and it will delete the next character. You can use the Option key to delete from where the cursor is back to the beginning of the word. Likewise you can use fn and the Option key to delete from the cursor to the end of the word.
Now you know Option and the left and right arrows will go by word and continuing to use Option and Delete will delete by word. So you can delete all the previous words by using Option Delete. Likewise you can do fn and Option to delete words going forward. Now the Command key can  be used to modify the Delete key but only to delete everything from the start of the line to the current character. 
Now you can also use the Control key with some letters and move the cursor around and delete. Most people don't know these. Control and the F and B keys will move forward and backwards. F and B. Control and a will move to the beginning of the paragraph and Control and E will move to the end of the paragraph. It will never go past the current paragraph so you can hit Control E as much as you want it will stick at the end of the paragraph. Control P and N will move down by line and up by line. Control H and D allow you to delete in either direction by one character. So you can delete one in that direction or one in that direction. 
Now remember how I said you can use Command and Delete to delete back to the beginning of the line. Like that. Well, there is no equivalent to delete to the end of the line. But there is a way to delete to the end of the paragraph. Use Control and K will move everything from the cursor to the end of the current paragraph. When we talk about selecting things you can use Command A to select all. It will select everything from the entire document. You can use Shift Command A to deselect whatever it is you have selected. 
So here are a few weird ones. You can use Control and L to center the cursor on the screen. So you can see how the cursor is now near the bottom of the screen. If I were to go and do Control L it moves it to now it's towards the center. This is especially useful if you place the cursor somewhere and then scroll somewhere else. Now you want to get back to where you were and you want to have the cursor right where you could see it in the middle. Just do Control L.
You could, of course, press Return to insert a new paragraph anywhere you want. But there's also a way to do that and keep the cursor in the same location. So if I do Control O it puts a new paragraph right there. But notice the cursor does not go down to the next line. Here's probably the weirdest keyboard shortcut of them all. If you place the cursor between two letters, notice it's between the E and the R, and do Control T it swaps those two letters. 
I was using Pages for this example. Most of this should work in any place that you're writing text on your Mac. So on a form on a webpage, when composing an email, in another app. But sometimes you're writing in something like Word that has some of its own keyboard shortcuts. So take the time to learn those that are specific to whatever app it is you're us
Now I know that some people are going to ask for a cheatsheet that they can print out with all of the these on them. So I created one. Just go to this post at MacMost.com, download it, and print it out.

Download the PDF to print out here: MacMostKeyboardShortcutsText.pdf

Comments: 4 Responses to “Mac Keyboard Commands For Writers”

Rocky

1 month ago

Sadly, these shortcuts do not work in InDesign (not even in its Story Editor). InDesign doesn’t even have replacement shortcuts for them. They only place where I can get some of these to work is in the dialogs. As a cautionary note, most of these keypresses do “other things” that could cause some trouble for you if you try them on a serious project.

Jim Cantrell

Gary, you continue to amaze and educate me. Love how you start at the beginning and move way past what I already know. Great job!

Ian Leckie

Thank you Gary for that to me unknown way to swap adjacent letters! Excellent! I’m a terrible typer, and often get letters mixed up (ae instead of ea etc.). And the cheat sheet will come in very handy! Again, thanks!

Jean-Claude

Thanks for that. I do a lot of typing and waste too much time with the mouse. I knew about several of these, but the hardest thing is getting into the habit of using them.

Mac Keyboard Commands For Writers

Comments: 4 Responses to “Mac Keyboard Commands For Writers”

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