Navigating Text

Introduction

Let's face it, a lot of our time is spent working with text. Clicking, selecting, copying, pasting: all of this takes time.

The purpose of this tutorial is to teach you to navigate text using only your keyboard. Our mice may be quick, but our keyboards are quicker. Going from typing to using the mouse takes time, too.

When typing in keyboard shortcuts, it's best to hold down the modifier key or keys (Command, Shift, Option) and then press the key that follows. For example, I don't have to hit Command and C at the same time to copy selected text, I can hold Command and type C whenever it's convenient.

Note: these shortcuts work in text documents or text boxes, but not all of them work in PDFs and webpages.

1. Moving around a Document

Just using the mouse or just using the arrow keys to move around a document takes a lot more time than you might think.

The basic way to move your cursor around a document is to use the arrow keys on your keyboard. The up (↑) and down (↓) keys move your cursor up one line or down one line, and the left (←) and right (→) keys move you left or right one character ( i.e. number, letter, space). Luckily, there are some keyboard shortcuts that make moving around a document a lot easier than pressing the arrow keys a hundred times. For starters: click anywhere in this textbox, then press Command + ↑. This command takes you to the very beginning of a document. (You should be in the very top-left of this textbox.) How do we get to the very end of a document? You guessed it: Command + ↓. Also, if you are in the first line of a document, just press ↑ to go to the beginning of that line, which is also the beginning of the document. This works with ↓ in the last line to go to the end of that line, too.

2. Moving around a Paragraph

3. Moving around a Sentence

To learn how to select text quickly and easily, see our page on Selecting Text.