Selecting Text - Jim Calloway

Selecting Text
by Jim Calloway, Director Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program

Sometimes we need to select a word, sentence or paragraph for copying, deleting or spell-checking. The "traditional" way to do this is to click at the beginning of the text, hold down the mouse button, move the cursor to the end of the text and release. The problem is that you sometimes accidentally select more or less text than you intended by using this method and have to try again.

Here are some tips for quick text selecting in your documents

• To select a word, double-click it
  
  
• To select a sentence, triple-click it
  
  
• To select a single line, click once directly to the left of the line, in the left margin.
  
  
• To select an entire paragraph, quadruple-click it (which is faster than it sounds) or double-click directly to the left of the paragraph in the margin.
  
  
• To select all of the text in a document (e.g., to paste the entire document into another document or an e-mail) use the Control + A Key combination.

  
  When keystrokes are mentioned with a plus sign (e.g. Alt + Tab) it means that both keys should be pressed simultaneously.
  
  When actions are separated by a dash (e.g. Click File - Print ) it means that they should be done in sequence.
  
  First published on BankersOnline.com 11/24/03