Selecting Text

Selecting (highlighting) text is an essential word processing skill. In many situations, you have to select text before issuing a command so that Word knows what text you want the command to affect. For example, you have to select text before cutting and pasting it or applying many kinds of formatting.

The most basic way of selecting text is to drag across it with the mouse. To do this, you position the I-beam at the beginning of the text you want to select, press and hold down the mouse button, drag across the text, and then release the mouse button. When text is selected, it becomes white against a black background, as shown in Figure 4.11. If you want to deselect text (remove the highlighting) without doing anything to it, click anywhere in the text area of the Word window, or press a navigation key such as one of the arrow keys, Home, or End.

Figure 4.11. Selected text is white against a black background.

If you accidentally drag over too much text, you can remove the extra text from the selection by keeping the mouse button held down as you drag back up and/or to the left.

Although dragging always works to select text, it is often not the most efficient method. Table 4.1 lists some shortcuts for selecting different amounts of text.

Three of the shortcuts involve clicking in the selection bar, the white area in the left margin of the page. When the mouse pointer is in this area, it becomes a white arrow angled toward your text. Some of the shortcuts also require you to Ctrl+click or Shift+click ”in other words, hold down the Ctrl key or Shift key as you click.

Table 4.1. Selection Shortcuts

Amount of Text Selected	Shortcut
One word	Double-click the word.
One sentence	Ctrl+click the sentence.
One line	Click in the selection bar to the left of the line.
One paragraph	Double-click in the selection bar to the left of the paragraph. (You can also triple-click directly on the paragraph.)
Entire document	Triple-click or Ctrl+click anywhere in the selection bar.
Any amount of text	Click at the beginning of the text you want to select, and then Shift+click at the end of the text.

If you like using the keyboard, you may prefer to select text by using only the keyboard. All of the keyboard selection techniques involve adding the Shift key to a navigation keyboard shortcut (whichever one travels the distance that you want to select). Table 4.2 lists some of the most common keyboard selection techniques.

Table 4.2. Keyboard Selection Techniques

Keyboard Technique	Amount Selected
Shift+	One character to the right
Shift+	One character to the left
Shift+	One line down
Shift+	One line up
Shift+Ctrl+	One word to the right
Shift+Ctrl+	One word to the left
Shift+Ctrl+	One paragraph down
Shift+Ctrl+	One paragraph up
Shift+End	From the insertion point to the end of the line
Shift+Home	From the insertion point to the beginning of the line
Shift+Ctrl+End	From the insertion point to the end of the document
Shift+Ctrl+Home	From the insertion point to the beginning of the document
Ctrl+A	The entire document (same as choosing Edit, Select All)

With the keyboard techniques involving pressing an arrow key, you can add to the selection by keeping the other keys in the combination held down as you repeatedly press the arrow key. For example, to select six words to the right, you would hold down the Shift and Ctrl keys as you pressed the right-arrow key six times.