Microsoft Word navigation: Some microrecommendations for editors

Summary

This blog recommends a combination of standard Word shortcuts and a few basic macros (with recommended shortcut keys) to help a copyeditor navigate efficiently within a Word window and edit with a clear focus. This involves a one-time set up and may benefit both new and experienced editors.

The description is for a Windows PC. You may be able to do this on a Mac (as the recommendations are pretty basic), but you may have to use the appropriate alternative keys on the Mac.

Introduction

While responding to a Facebook post in one of the editorial groups, I'd mentioned that becoming competent at Word would involve three stages:

• Learning keyboard shortcuts and using them routinely
• Learning to use Word styles
• Learning to use macros

I'd also mentioned that many editors skip the first step without realizing that it can help them pick up the other two in a better way (than without it).

It’s quite possible that you may not be able to visualize the power and confidence Windows and Word shortcuts can provide in your daily work life. The sheer number of useful shortcuts (see download at (https://www.theartofcopyediting.com/lp-essential-windows-and-word-shortcuts) can itself be daunting to many! Plus, you have the mouse—it seems such a nice thing to hold on to when you're already battling your editorial confusions!

I felt that a small set of practical recommendations (of the greatest use in daily editing) can help editors overcome the initial hesitations and get a first-hand experience of the power of Word shortcuts and also learn how they can help in maintaining focus on what they're doing.

For this, the most natural choice may be Word navigation. But navigation in Word can mean many things, such as going to a particular page, section, table, or figure, or finding a particular word or expression. But, for our purposes, I'm going to confine our navigation to just one screen of a Word document and show what wonders we can do within that one screen.

Trust me, both new and experienced editors may benefit from what follows. Simply try out these in any Word document. I guarantee that you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Navigation within a Word screen

Just imagine the setting:

• You have one screen of content, perhaps two paragraphs, the second one even incomplete (i.e., the second paragraph goes beyond the visible screen)
• You read from left to right (i.e., horizontally), line by line (i.e., vertically), and come to the line at the bottom of the screen

During this process, you may

• insert or delete punctuation marks
• insert, delete, or replace words
• transpose words or
• even move a couple of words from the beginning of a sentence to the end (or vice versa).

To do these actions, you'll have to

• go to the end of words
• go to the beginning of words or select them fully

To navigate to these points, you have the following built-in aids (shortcuts) in Word:

• Move horizontally
  • Beginning or end of line: Home and End keys
  • Jump to the beginning of words: Ctrl + right/left arrow keys (keep the arrow key pressed till you reach your word of interest)
  • Jump to a word near the beginning or end of a line: Home, then Ctrl + right arrow key; or End, then Ctrl + left arrow key (This combination is specifically mentioned to make you think of such combinations)
  • Delete word(s): Ctrl + Del (even Ctrl + Backspace if you want to delete a word backward)
  • Select word(s): Ctrl + Shift + left/right arrow keys (keep the arrow key pressed to select more words)
  • Select sentence: Ctrl + Shift + Alt + left/right arrow keys
  • Delete selection: Del key
• Move vertically
  • One line below or above: Dn and Up arrow keys (You can then use the Ctrl + left/right arrows to move to words on the left or right)
  • Jump to the next/previous paragraph: Ctrl + Dn/Up arrow keys (Note that this does not move your cursor vertically, but to the beginning—extreme left—of the next/previous paragraph)
  • Select paragraph: Ctrl + Shift + Dn arrow key (Note that when you use the Shift key, only the current paragraph gets selected, and the cursor does not go to the next paragraph)

Limitations in Word

• Would it not be nice if you could jump from sentence to sentence?
  • Well, Word does have that facility (SentLeft and SentRight commands).
  • But these are hidden deep inside Word, and you will have to assign shortcuts to these commands to keep using them repeatedly.
• Would it not be nice if you could jump from punctuation to punctuation—in case you want to change any?
  • You can do this by using a macro (see later) and assigning it to a shortcut for repeated use.
• Would it not be nice if you could jump to the end of a word—what if you want to insert a missing punctuation?
  • Word does not—unfortunately—have this function.
  • But you can do this by using another macro and assigning it to another shortcut for repeated use.
• Would it not be nice if the screen moved in such a way that the last line on the screen became the first line at the top—so that you could continue to edit without any break in thought? (Of course, if your sentence continues on to the next line, you may use the Dn arrow key to see and edit the full sentence before you move the screen.)
  • Word's PgDn feature does not work this way; rather, the screen and cursor always move in such a way that only the next line (and not the last line where your cursor is) becomes the first line at the top.
    • Try this on a Word document, with different Zooms; then you'll see what I mean.
  • Word does have a command (Ctrl + Alt + PgDn/PgUp) for End/Beginning of window.
    • But depending on how the content falls on the screen, the cursor may move to the beginning or end of the last line of the window
    • Either way, these commands will not be of any help to you in terms of how you want the screen to move.

Addressing the limitations in Word

Moving from one sentence to another

Jack Lyon mentioned this hidden function in Word in his book Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals as early as 2008.

• Open the Customize Keyboard dialog box (File, Options, Customize Ribbon, Keyboard shortcuts, Customize).
• Scroll down and select All Commands.
• On the Commands panel (on the right), select SentLeft and assign Ctrl + Alt + Up arrow as its shortcut.
• Similarly, select SentRight and assign Ctrl + Alt + Dn arrow as its shortcut.
• (While doing this you may also note that SentLeftExtend and SentRightExtend have the shortcuts Ctrl + Shift + Alt + left/right arrows already assigned in Word.)
• Close the dialog box and test these keys (Ctrl + Alt + Up/Dn) to your satisfaction. Are you now able to move from one sentence to another, either way?

Moving from punctuation to punctuation

Geoff Hart outlined a macro for these actions in an article in 2011.

• Copy and paste the macros given below into a VBA window (Alt + F11), save, and close the window.
  • If you are a newbie editor and do not know anything about adding macros to Word, you can learn how to do it from here.
  • You'll never regret it; rather, you'll know later that you started off in the right direction.

VBA code to move to the next punctuation mark

Sub MoveToNextPunctuation()
' Selects the next punctuation mark
 
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "[,.;:\?\!\(\)-]"
        .Replacement.Text = ""
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchWildcards = True
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute
End Sub

VBA code to move to the previous punctuation mark

Sub MoveToPreviousPunctuation()
' Selects the previous punctuation mark
 
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "[,.;:\?\!\(\)-]"
        .Replacement.Text = ""
        .Forward = False
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchWildcards = True
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute
End Sub

• Open the Customize Keyboard dialog box (File, Options, Customize Ribbon, Keyboard shortcuts, Customize).

• Now scroll down on the left panel and select Macros.

• On the Commands panel (on the right), find the macros you just added and assign Ctrl + Alt + right arrow and Ctrl + Alt + left arrow as the shortcuts to move to the next/previous punctuation marks.

• Close the dialog box and test the shortcuts on a Word document.

• When you press Ctrl + Alt + right arrow, the cursor will select the next punctuation mark (and you can change it to whatever you want). When you keep both the keys pressed, the cursor will move to successive punctuation marks. You will see a similar thing (but in the opposite direction) when you press the Ctrl + Alt + left arrow key.

Moving to the end of a word (and successive words)

For this we use a macro written by Allen Wyatt (https://wordribbon.tips.net/T008336_Jumping_to_the_End_of_a_Word). I'm providing the macro here just for convenience.

• Copy and paste the macro given below into the VBA window (Alt + F11), save, and close the window.

VBA code to move to the end of a word

Sub MoveToEndOfWord2()
' Macro by Allen Wyatt, updated January 22, 2022
' The 2 at the end of the name is simply an identifier used by Allen. You can remove the 2 if you want
    If Selection.Text = " " Then
        Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdWord, Count:=1
    End If

    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdWord, Count:=1
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

    If Selection.Text <> " " Then
        Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
    End If
End Sub

• Open the Customize Keyboard dialog box (File, Options, Customize Ribbon, Keyboard shortcuts, Customize).

• Scroll down and select All Commands.

• On the Commands panel (on the right), select WordRight. You will see that it has the shortcut Ctrl + right arrow already assigned to it. Remove it.

• Now scroll down on the left panel and select Macros.

• On the Commands panel (on the right), find the macro you just added and assign Ctrl + right arrow as its shortcut.

• Close the dialog box and test the shortcut on a Word document.

• When you press Ctrl + right arrow, the cursor will move to the end of the word in the right direction. When you keep both the keys pressed, the cursor will move to the end of every successive word. You have now overridden Word's normal behavior (for this particular shortcut) to your advantage.

• When you press Ctrl + left arrow, the cursor will move to the beginning of the word in the left direction. When you keep both the keys pressed, the cursor will move to the beginning of every previous word. This is normal behavior in Word.

• Earlier, you had two keys performing the same function in Word (going to the beginning of words) in different directions. Now you have one key (Ctrl + left arrow) taking you to the beginning of a word in the left direction, and the other key (Ctrl + right arrow) taking you to the end of a word in the right direction. You can now use these keys in combination to go to the beginning or end of any word.

Editing screen by screen

For this, we use the JumpScroll macro provided by Paul Beverley  (https://www.wordmacrotools.com/macros/J/JumpScroll.txt). For convenience, I'm reproducing the macro below.

• Copy and paste the JumpScroll macro into a VBA window (Alt + F11), save, and close the window.

VBA code to move the current line to the top of the screen 

Sub JumpScroll()
' Paul Beverley - Version 08.10.18
' Scrolls current line to the top of the page

Set rng = Selection.range.Duplicate
ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.LargeScroll down:=2
rng.Select
ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.SmallScroll down:=1
End Sub

• Open the Customize Keyboard dialog box (File, Options, Customize Ribbon, Keyboard shortcuts, Customize).

• Scroll down and select All Commands.

• On the Commands panel (on the right), select EndOfWindow. You will see that it has the shortcut Ctrl + Alt + PgDn already assigned to it. Remove it.

• Now scroll down on the left panel and select Macros.

• On the Commands panel (on the right), find the JumpScroll macro and assign Ctrl + Alt + PgDn as its shortcut.

• Close the dialog box and test the shortcut on a Word document.

• When your cursor is on the last line of the screen and you press Ctrl + Alt + PgDn, the line will simply move to the top of the screen, and you can now continue to edit in a focused manner. (If the sentence on the last line of the screen continues beyond the visible screen, you may want to use the Dn arrow once before using the shortcut key.)

Taking stock and understanding the bigger picture

The table below summarizes the wonderful things possible when you implement all the recommendations in this article.

Much thought has gone into the shortcut recommendations. You'll find that you are able to achieve a lot with a simple combination of the same familiar keys.

In case you've already assigned any of these keys to some other function, or if any Word Add-in you've installed uses any of these keys for some other function, you'll have to figure out how else you can make these suggestions work. You can take a print (PDF) of your custom shortcut keys—Ctrl P and then scroll under Settings to choose Custom shortcut keys and then choose Microsoft Print to PDF under Printer—to analyze them and then decide which shortcut keys to use.

Once you set up the macros/shortcuts and try out the methods described here, you'll discover that you're able to edit

• in a focused manner (Advantage 1)
• without ever having to touch the mouse (Advantage 2)

and that you now enjoy the editing process—something you may not have thought of (Advantage 3).

Feel free to let me know your thoughts after you test these recommendations (use the comments section below).