Despite the many excellent, free word processors most learning providers and their learners still spend most of their writing time using Microsoft Word.

It tends to be the most compatible tool you can choose to exchange documents with others, and lots of people are even forced to use it by dictatorial IT departments. For those who know me well, keyboard shortcuts are used where ever I can (it saves so much time in the long run); the more you use them the easier and productive you become.

I've come across some "different-tips" to share with you...

• Paste Your Formats. If you want to apply your formatting and styles for a given paragraph or document to a new paragraph or document...
  • hit Ctrl+Shift+C to copy,
  • select the text you want to apply the formatting to, then
  • hit Ctrl+Shift+V - Colors, fonts, styles and all other formatting will be applied.

• Where was I? If you need to close a document but want to have your cursor sitting right where you left it in the middle of an editing session when you reopen - Go ahead and close it.
  
  • When you reopen it to resume editing,
  • hit Shift+F5 to take your cursor back to precisely where you were.

• Changing Paragraph Placement. Often, one paragraph or another in a document might work better above or below its current location. You don't have to cut and paste to move paragraphs around. Just...
  
  • hold down the Shift and Alt keys together, then
  • use the up and down arrow keys to move the paragraph around in the document.

• Paragraph Alignment. Hit...
  • CTRL+E to centre
  • CTRL+L to left-align
  • CTRL+R to right-align a paragraph.

• Create a Line across the width of a document, as you might do to separate one part of a document from another,
  
  • hit the hyphen key three times and then
  • hit Enter.

• Save Many open Documents at Once. If you have eight Word documents open and need to take a break, then save all the open documents by
  
  • holding down the Shift key and go to Word's File menu. The usual Save menu choice will show up as Save All.