selecting commands

Selecting Commands:

Before you can fully understand how selecting text works, you will need to complete the "movement commands". These are the keystrokes that you will use to move around the screen. The movement commands are building blocks to the selecting commands and you will need to know these first. If you haven't learned these commands, return to the Movement commands in the Table of contents to achieve this lesson first.

What does selecting mean?

Selecting means that you are pointing out to the computer specific text that you are going to change. The computer then knows that it is going to do something with the selected text. Another way to think of selected text is highlighting text. If you want to replace anything on the computer, you will need to identify that text or item first by selecting it or highlighting it.

What are the selecting commands?

The selecting commands are the same as the movement commands accept you add the shift key to every movement command needed to select the desired text to be replaced. The first thing you need to do is place the curser on the first letter that is going to follow the text you are going to select. Now, determine how much of the text you will need to change whether by letter, words, lines and so on and choose one of the following commands that best fits your selecting need. You will hear the movement command first then the selecting command with the shift key included.

Moving forward letter by letter, "right arrow, Selecting, "shift right arrow"
Moving backward letter by letter, "Left arrow, Selecting, "shift left arrow"
moving backward word by word, "control left arrow", Selecting, "control, Shift left arrow", hold both control and shift then tap left arrow.
moving forward word by word, "control right arrow", hold the control key down and tap the right arrow, Selecting, "control, Shift right arrow", hold both control and shift then tap the right arrow.
Moving to the previous line, "up arrow, Selecting, "Shift up arrow", hold shift then tap the up arrow.
To move to the next line, "down arrow, Selecting, "Shift down arrow", hold shift then tap the down arrow.
To move your cursor backward 25 lines, "page up, Selecting, "Shift page up", hold shift then tap the page up key.
for the next 25 lines, "page down, Selecting, "Shift page down", hold shift then tap the page down key.
To move to the beginning of the line, "home key", remember there are two of these keys, Selecting, to select from the cursor to the beginning of the line, "shift home"
Move to the end of the line, "end key", remember there are also two of these keys, Selecting, to select from the cursor to the end of the line, "shift end"
To move to the top of the document, "control home, Selecting, to select from the cursor to the beginning of the document, "Control, shift home"
To move to the bottom of the document, "control end key, Selecting, to select from the cursor to the end of the document, "Control, shift end"

There is one more selecting command than the movement commands. That is the command that selects the whole document. This command is:

"Control A"

Now, once the text is selected, the computer is waiting for you to tell it what to do with the selected text. At this point, you can perform a lot of commands that will change the text like changing the color, size, boldness, whether it is underlined, in all caps, etc. We will give you a list of these commands a little later; but, first, we are going to learn the copy and cut commands. You will use these commands much more than any other.

Selecting text seems to be quite a lot to remember; but, as always, the more you use it the easier it will become. Take time to practice the moving and selecting commands before moving to the next lesson. If you think you are ready to move on to copy, cutting and pasting commands, press enter on the next link to begin. Copy, cutting and pasting

End of this lesson