I feel a little embarrassed writing this post because I feel sure that everyone who reads this blog must know about these shortcuts – but I’m also constantly surprised by what people don’t know.
So for those of you who didn’t know:
- Ctrl+X is Cut
- Ctrl+C is Copy
- Ctrl+V is Paste
The first thing that I want you to notice is that these three keys are right ext to each other on the keyboard right there almost next to your Ctrl key – XCV.
The second thing I want you to know is that these are universal shortcuts, they work everywhere.
If you are a complete mouse junky then you are probably not working in the most efficient way that you could be. There are some things that are just quicker with a keyboard and cut, copy, paste operations are definitely more efficient with a keyboard.
Select with the mouse of you have to, but even that can be better done with a keyboard.
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Graham Chastney 
And they even work in Word 2007! In fact, I think that may be all that was brought forward from earlier versions of Word. :-)These are indeed helpful and I could not imagine going up to the Edit menu every time I needed to cut, copy, and paste. You may wish to add CTRL+Z to this list given that it is right in line with the rest of these and is used by most people at least as often. CTRL+Y, well that might be for another blog post.
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Thanks Chase.
I did consider doing a post simply entitled “keyboard shortcuts” but decided that I might be more helpful for people to have them in smaller bite sized chunks.
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Actually, I think that the reason that they were chosen was not because they are next to each other on the Qwerty keyboard. In fact you might want cut and copy to be separated to prevent misuse.
Anyway, they are mnemonical, the Cut being X is likened to a pair of scissors (upright) and V as Paste being like the old ^ as a mark to insert something (but of course V is upside down). The only really mnemonical one is C for Copy. So it is rather intriguing to see that the old paper ways of doing things) with scissors and marks has lasted into the IT age.
Also there is the need to have other things use the menemonics – like Print for P, S for Save, O for Open etc.
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