Microsoft Word Shortcuts and Commands

There are many shortcuts for common functions in Microsoft Word. These shortcuts or commands can come in handy when typing a report or term paper, or even a letter. It is a good idea to try some of these functions before you actually begin a project. Once you become familiar with the way they work, you may become hooked on shortcuts.

Executing Shortcuts

Before you can use shortcuts commands, it's important to understand a few requirements. If the shortcut involves a section of text (words you have typed), you will need to highlight the text before typing the command. For instance, to bold a word or words, you must highlight them first.

For other commands, you may only need to place the cursor at a specific place. For instance, if you want to insert a footnote, place the cursor in the relevant position. The commands below are sectioned into groups by alphabetical order to make it easier to find the ones you need.

Bold Through Italics

Boldfacing a word or group of words is one of the handiest shortcut commands in Microsoft Word. Other commands, such as centering text, creating a hanging indent, or even calling for help can be useful shortcuts to know. The latter command—calling for help by pressing the F1 key—brings up a printed helpfile to the right of your document, which even includes its own search function. (The last section of this article contains instructions for the search command.)

Justify Through Single-Space Lines

Justifying a paragraph will make it flush left and flush right rather than ragged-right, which is the default in Word. But, you can also left-align a paragraph, create a page break, and even mark a table of contents or index entry, as the shortcut commands in this section show.

Subscripts Through Undo

If you're writing a science paper, you might need to place certain letters or numbers in subscript, such as in H₂0, the chemical formula for water. The subscript shortcut makes it easy to do this, but you can also create a superscript with a shortcut command. And, if you make a mistake, correcting it is only a CTRL = Z away.