by Patricia Bradley, @PTBradley1

I don’t know about you, but I hate using a mouse. It makes my hand and wrist hurt, shoulder, too. Soooo I thought for my post this month I would share a few of the most common keyboard shortcuts that I use. 

There are many more than the ones I have listed here, and I thought about adding more, but then I decided it got overwhelming. You can find quite a few more by googling computer shorts. 

Without further ado, these are the ones I use the most:

COMPOSING & EDITING	WINDOWS	MAC
Create a new document	Ctrl-N	⌘-N
Open document	Ctrl-O	⌘-O
Save document	Ctrl-S	⌘-S
“Save As”	F12	⌘-Shift-S
Close document	Ctrl-W	⌘-W
Print document	Ctrl-P	⌘-P
Select All	Ctrl-A	⌘-A
Copy to clipboard	Ctrl-C	⌘-C or F3
Paste from clipboard	Ctrl-V	⌘-V or F4
Delete selection & copy to clipboard	Ctrl-X	⌘-X or F2
Undo last action	Ctrl-Z	⌘-Z or F1
Redo last action	Ctrl-Y	⌘-Y
Add comment	Ctrl-Alt-M	⌘-Option-A
Turn revision tracking on/off	Ctrl-Shift-E	⌘-Shift-E
Run spelling/grammar check	F7	⌘-Option-L or F7
Find	Ctrl-F	⌘-F
Go to dialog box	Ctrl-G or F5	⌘-Option-G or F5
Move to top of document	Ctrl-Home	⌘-Home or ⌘-Fn-Left arrow
Move to bottom of document	Ctrl-End	⌘-End or ⌘-Fn-Right arrow

TEXT FORMATTING	WINDOWS	MAC
Bold	Ctrl-B	⌘-B
Italics	Ctrl-I	⌘-I
Underline	Ctrl-U	⌘-U
Double underline	Ctrl-Shift-D	⌘-Shift-D
Underline words, not spaces	Ctrl-Shift-W	⌘-Shift-W
Strikethrough text	Alt-H, 4	⌘-Shift-X

PARAGRAPH FORMATTING	WINDOWS	MAC
Left-align text	Ctrl-L	⌘-L
Right-align text	Ctrl-R	⌘-R
Center-align text	Ctrl-E	⌘-E
Justify text	Ctrl-J	⌘-J
Indent paragraph	Ctrl-M	Ctrl-Shift-M

I hope you will print these out and keep them by your computer—these shortcuts will save you time and wear and tear on your mouse hand.

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Deception, Natchez Trace Park Rangers, Book 4

When ISB Ranger Madison Thorn arrives in Natchez to investigate a white-collar scheme, she has no idea she will be thrown back into the violent crimes division–or that it will get so personal. She’ll have to work with her childhood-enemy-turned-handsome-charmer to unravel the clues before it’s too late.

Patricia Bradley is a Carol finalist and winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense, and three anthologies that included her stories debuted on the USA Today Best Seller List. She and her two cats call Northeast Mississippi home–the South is also where she sets most of her books. Her romantic suspense novels include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. Deception, the third book in the Natchez Trace Park Rangers series, releases August 2, 2022. She is now hard at work on a new series set in the Cumberland Plateau around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her writing workshops include American Christian Fiction Writers online courses, workshops at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference, the KenTen Retreat and Scrivenings Press Author Retreat where she was also the keynote. When she has time, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and see what happens.