A few more keyboard shortcuts (Word, all recent versions)

In the previous post, I mentioned Ctrl Q, which will strip out all formatting you have applied manually to a paragraph via the Paragraph dialog. It’s important to note that Ctrl Q will not work on paragraphs to which a style has been applied. When a style has been superimposed on a paragraph, use Ctrl Shift N (for Normal) to clear the formatting. Ctrl Shift N reapplies the Normal paragraph style — in other words, the default settings.

Many people are unaware that you can easily increase the font size one point by selecting text and pressing Ctrl ] (close bracket). Each time you press that key combination, the size will increase by an additional point. To decrease the font size one point, press Ctrl [ (open bracket).

Ctrl > (close chevron) and Ctrl < (open chevron) work the same way, except that they change the font size by two points if the existing font size is 12 points or larger.

Ctrl Shift Spacebar (or is that Space Bar?) inserts a hard (non-breaking) space, useful when you want to keep two words or other bits of text together on one line. For example, you can use a non-breaking space between a person's title and her last name (e.g., Ms. Berinstein) so that the title isn't dangling on the line above the name. Some people like to keep the month and day together in dates (e.g., July 17).

Ctrl Shift – (hyphen) creates a non-breaking hyphen, sometimes used to keep telephone numbers on the same line (555-1212).

Pressed for time at the moment, but stay tuned.

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