Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Proofreaders

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Proofreaders

  • Sep 25, 2021
  • 4 min read

If you’re a freelance proofreader, you’ll likely spend a lot of time using a laptop or computer. And knowing some keyboard shortcuts can make your life much easier when proofreading a document. Plus, the faster you can proofread, the more you can earn! In this post, we’ll take you through a few useful keyboard shortcuts, both generally and in Microsoft Word, to make proofreading smoother and faster.

Please note that the use of the plus symbol in the shortcuts described in this post refers to sequences of keys that you should press simultaneously (not that you need to press the plus key on your keyboard).

General Keyboard Shortcuts

Whether you use a laptop or a desktop computer, there are some shortcuts that work on text in most applications. Proofreaders should get familiar with the following shortcuts:

Action Windows Shortcut Mac Shortcut
Copy selected text Ctrl + C Cmd + C
Cut selected text Ctrl + X Cmd + X
Paste selected text Ctrl + V Cmd + V
Undo an action Ctrl + Z Cmd + Z
Redo an action Ctrl + Y Cmd + Y
Select all text Ctrl + A Cmd + A

When you’re proofreading text, it’s also handy to know some shortcuts for special characters like en and em dashes and letters with accents (also known as diacritics). Some of these include:

Action Windows Shortcut Mac Shortcut
En dash Alt + 0150 Opt + –
Em dash Alt + 0151 Opt + Shift + –
á Alt + 160 a + ‘
é Alt + 0201 e + ‘
í Alt + 161 i + ‘
ó Alt + 162 o + ‘
ú Alt + 163 u + ‘

However, the shortcuts above for Windows only work on keyboards with numeric keypads.

If you don’t have a numeric keypad, select these characters straight from the special characters menu by using the shortcut Windows key + . or Ctrl + Cmd + Space bar, or selecting Insert > Symbols in MS Word.

Keyboard shortcuts for proofreaders symbols menu

The symbols menu in Windows.

MS Word Keyboard Shortcuts

Since you’ll likely do a significant amount of your proofreading work in Word, it’s also worth knowing a few shortcuts here. We’ve split these into two categories:

  1. Document-level (keyboard shortcuts related to documents as a whole)
  2. Text-level (shortcuts that you can use to edit the text in a document)

Read on to find out more about these.

Document-Level MS Word Keyboard Shortcuts

These are shortcuts for saving, opening, and closing documents.

Action Windows Shortcut Mac Shortcut
Open a new document Ctrl + N Cmd + N
Open an existing document Ctrl + O Cmd + O
Close a specific document Ctrl + W Cmd + W
Save a document Ctrl + S Cmd + S
Save as F12 Cmd + Shift + S
Print Ctrl + P Cmd + P
Open print preview Ctrl + F2 Cmd + P
Toggle ribbon Ctrl + F1 Opt + Cmd + R
Cancel Esc Esc

Text-Level MS Word Keyboard Shortcuts

These shortcuts are for moving the cursor around the document, formatting fonts, applying superscript, aligning text, etc.

Action Windows Shortcut Mac Shortcut
Move cursor one character to left or right Left and right arrows Left and right arrows
Move cursor one word left or right Ctrl + left or right arrow Opt + left or right arrow
Move one paragraph up or down Ctrl + up or down arrow Cmd + up or down arrow
Move cursor to the end of a line End Cmd + right arrow
Move cursor to the start of a line Home Cmd + left arrow
Move cursor to end of a doc Ctrl + End Cmd + Fn + right arrow
Move cursor to beginning of a doc Ctrl + Home Cmd + Fn + left arrow
Increase or decrease font size by one pt. Ctrl + [ or ] Cmd + [ or ]
Toggle bold, italics, or underscore Ctrl + B, I, or U Cmd + B, I, or U
Apply subscript Ctrl + = Cmd + =
Apply superscript Ctrl + Shift + Cmd + Shift =
Align text center, left, or right Ctrl + E, L, or R Cmd + E, L, or R
Insert hyperlink in selected text Ctrl + K Cmd + K
Search the document Ctrl + F Cmd + F

And remember: you can also create custom shortcuts in MS Word.

Proofreading in Microsoft Word

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