Lesson 2 Introduction

This lesson will acquaint you with different ways to select, move, and copy text in Word. Perhaps the most common procedure used with any word processor is selecting text. This is the first step to editing your document. You can change the font traits, change alignments (left, center, right or full), delete, spell check, move, or copy after text has been selected. This lesson also addresses using the shortcut menu for a variety of editing tasks.

Objectives

Be able to select text using the mouse or keyboard commands.

Learn ways to select a sentence, paragraph, page, or the entire document using the mouse.

Learn multiple ways to move and copy text.

Learn how to undo the last deletion or the last move.

Use some of the items under the shortcut menu for a block of text.

Basic Ways to Select Text You need to be aware of your insertion point when you start to select text. You can move the mouse pointer around within the document area, but this does not change the insertion point, which is where text or an item is inserted. The insertion point displays as a blinking vertical bar and can also be called the cursor. An easy way to move the insertion point is to move the mouse pointer to another place in the document and click one time.

Mouse: Point to the beginning or end of an area to be selected, press and hold the left button down, drag the mouse across the information you want to select, then release the mouse button.

Keyboard: Place the insertion point where you want the selection to begin, press the <F8> key, and use the arrow keys on the keyboard to highlight the selection. Press <Esc> to end the selection. An alternative to using the <F8> and <Esc> keys is double-clicking on the [EXT] button, located at the bottom of the screen, to begin and end text selection.

To clear a selection, regardless of the method that you have used to select text, click once anywhere inside the document area (like on a blank line), except in the selection bar. The selection bar is the area directly to the left of text (left margin).