The Green Geek: Getting Hot with Keys

Q:

Dear Green Geek,

I was watching my son use his new laptop from school the other day and he was whizzing through his work almost without his hands leaving the keyboard. I asked him how he was going so fast and he said he was using ‘hotkeys.’ I’ve now learnt about the hotkeys for cut and paste, but it looks like there are a lot more. Do you have a list of hotkeys you can share with us?

Sincerely,

Speedy Gonzalez

A:

Dear Speedy,

The term “hotkeys” refers to special combinations of keys on your keyboard that you can press to quickly perform computer tasks. The most commonly used hotkeys are activated by pressing the Control key on your keyboard (also known as Ctrl) and a letter key. Another common hotkey combination is to press the Alternate key (also known as Alt) and a letter key. In fact, these two hotkey combinations are so common that keyboards have a Control and Alternate key on both the left and the right hand side of the keyboard. This way, if your left hand is pressing the Control or Alternate you’re your right hand will be free to press a letter key, and vice versa.

What’s the point of hotkeys? Speed. Hotkeys let you perform a wide variety of common tasks, such as copying or moving text, saving your file or inserting new information into your document... all without having to move your hands off the keyboard. People who master hotkeys can speed through documents at the speed of light.

When using hotkeys, it is also important to understand the concept of your computer’s clipboard. The clipboard is a simple, but often misunderstood, feature of every modern computer. It is basically a special part of your computer’s memory that you can put ‘stuff’ into for short periods of time. The clipboard does not care what information you put into it – you can copy a picture, text, and even entire accounting or customer records, into the clipboard. Once information is in the clipboard, it remains there until you put something else into it. Most importantly, the clipboard is part of your computer’s memory (or more correctly the operating system’s) and as such it is available to every application that you run. For example, you can copy a picture from a web browser application and copy it into the clipboard, then go to Microsoft Word and paste it into your document.

Hotkey combinations are application specific. This means that the hotkeys for your word processor will be different to the hotkeys for your spreadsheet or accounting program. This is because different applications do different things – obviously the hotkeys for these applications will do different things.

The good news is, over the past few decades, software developers have settled on some common hotkey that are used by almost applications.

Common Hotkeys found in Most Applications

Function	Action	Hotkey Combination
Cut	Deletes whatever you have currently selected and places it into your computer’s clipboard, ready to be pasted elsewhere in the document.	Ctrl X
Copy	Makes a copy of whatever you have currently selected and places the copy into your computer’s clipboard, ready to be pasted elsewhere in the document.	Ctrl C
Paste	Inserts whatever information is in your computer’s clipboard.	Ctrl V
Undo	Reverses whatever action you just performed. This is great if you accidentally delete or mess up your work.	Ctrl Z
Redo	Reverses the previous undo action.	Ctrl Y
Save	Immediately saves your work. Do this often so if your computer crashes, you will still have your work intact.	Ctrl S
Open	Open a new document.	Ctrl O
Find	Search your document for specific information.	Ctrl F
Replace	Search your entire document for specific text and replace that text with text you type in.	Ctrl H
Print	Print your document.	Ctrl P
Select All	Selects everything in your document.	Ctrl A
Help	Calls up a help screen for the current application.	F1

Navigation Hotkeys

Next	Moves you to the next ‘field’ or item in a list or window.	Tab
Next Tab	When in a tabbed window, move to the next tabbed page.	Ctrl Tab
Switch Window	Switch to the next open window or application.	Alt Tab
Switch Window	This is the alternative method of switch to the next open window or application when using Microsoft Windows.	Windows Tab
Top	Takes you to the top of your document.	Ctrl Home
Bottom	Takes you to the end of your document.	Ctrl End
Refresh	Redraws or redisplays everything in the current window. This is particularly useful when browsing the internet.	F5
File menu	Displays the ‘File Menu’ for the current application.	Alt F
Maximize	Makes the window you are working expand to its largest possible size.	Alt F10

Common Hotkeys for Working with Text

Bold	Make the select text bold.	Ctrl B
Italics	Make the selected text italics.	Ctrl I
Underline	Underline the selected text.	Ctrl U
Next Word	Move to the start of the next word.	Ctrl Right Arrow
Previous Word	Move to the start of the previous word.	Ctrl Left Arrow
Select a block of text.	Starting where the cursor is positioned, mark some text as being selected. This is accomplished by holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys, then pressing the arrow keys repeatedly until you have the text you want selected. This is a really useful combination when using spreadsheets and word processing documents!	Ctrl Shift Any Arrow Key

There are hundreds of other hotkeys that are specific to particular applications. For example, Photoshop has over 100 unique hotkeys just for its special functions. Some programs even give you the ability to make your own hotkeys! However, the above lists give you the most common hotkeys and it’s likely that as you learn them they will become second nature and you’ll become a lot faster at your computing chores… which means less time on the computer and more time in the garden!