A constant theme at DadOverflow.com is the need to save time given the fact that family and other commitments lay claim to so much of mine. When writing code or prose on a computer, the more I can keep my fingers on the keyboard and minimize having to grab my mouse for particular operations, the more time-efficient I can be. To that end, here are a few keyboard shortcuts–sometimes called hotkeys–I tend to use quite a bit to maximize my time on the keyboard. The cool thing about many of these is that most applications–from Microsoft products to open source–support the same shortcuts.

1. Cut, Copy, and Paste: Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V

Let’s just get this one out of the way: those of us who remember typewriters have great appreciation for cut, copy, and paste operations in modern editors. These shortcut keys make quick work of these important functions.

2. Highlighting characters and words: Shift+<arrow key>

Cut, copy, and paste are great, but don’t you have to use the mouse to highlight the word or phrase you want to cut or copy? No, sir! Depending on where your cursor is in your document, you can hold down Shift and then click the left or right arrow key to begin highlighting, character by character, the word or phrase you want to cut or copy. If you want to save some time, hold Shift+Ctrl and then click your left or right arrow key to select an entire word at once. If you want to highlight the entire line, first click your <home> button to place your cursor at the beginning of the line, then hold Shift and click the <end> button. Holding Shift and then clicking either your up arrow key or down will also allow you to select large sections of text.

3. Marking up text: bold, italics, etc.

Often, you’ll want to bold, italicize, underline, or otherwise modify your text in some fashion. Keyboard hotkeys to the rescue! First, highlight the text you want to modify using the techniques I described above. To bold your selected text, select Ctrl+B. To italicize, Ctrl+I. To underline, Ctrl+U (although I’ll note here that not all editors I’ve used support that particular function). To strike through your text, Ctrl+-. There are likely many other ways to modify your text; these are simply the options I use most often.

4. Hyperlink your text: Ctrl+K

Turning you text into hyperlinks to other sites, articles, reports, and so forth is a great way to keep your prose readable but still provide further details where needed. Here again, highlight the text you want with my techniques above and then click Ctrl+K. Most editors will then present you with a dialog where you can Ctrl+V the hyperlink you want to link to.

5. Nesting and unnesting bullets

Using bullets in your writing are:

One challenge with bullet points, though, is when you want to include sub-bullets or, when you’re done listing your sub-bullets, climbing your way back up a level. The Tab key is your friend here. When you’re ready to dive into the sub-bullet pit, click Tab to go down one level. When you’re ready to climb back up a level, Shift+Tab will do the trick.

6. Undoing your mistakes: Ctrl+Z

My ratio of mistakes to successes is about 5:1. So, I use Ctrl+Z quite a bit.

7. Saving your documents: Ctrl+S

Save early, save often. Ctrl+S for the win!

8. New documents: Ctrl+N

Most multi-document interface (MDI) editors support the hotkey Ctrl+N to launch a brand new, blank document.

9. Open a document: Ctrl+O

Within your editor, Ctrl+O should open a dialog to let you choose an existing document to open and edit. That can be helpful if you’re not able to drag-and-drop your document on the canvas of the editor or if the file extension of the document is mapped to a different application.