Mental Auto-Complete and Shortcuts
I sometimes find that my fingers go faster on he keyboard than my brain can spew out thoughts. I’m often auto-completing words that begin the same as a frequently typed word I’m thinking about, but in the end – they end up as typos. Example: Chick Flick becomes Chick Flickr, Dance becomes Duane. Such a thing could make for an amusing post, if left unaltered.
On a similar note, I sat down at my mother’s PC the other day and realized that over the last year my fingers had been completely retrained to use Macs. I would normally place them a certain way to open another tab in Firefox, however my left ring finger now had to extend a little further to press the CTRL button, with the “T” following it. If this isn’t the proper finger positioning per grade school keyboarding, I have no excuse aside from the fact that I taught myself to type expediently before such a class was taken.
Indulge my geekiness here while I share my top five basic/fave keyboard shortcuts that are conducive to speedy computing:
Okay, that was more than five, but feel free to share if you have any of your own – for Mac or PC.
Entries on this website use the 
I *heart* Ctrl + Z! It has helped me save LOTS of papers
hahah I’ve started to notice the slip ups on PC keyboards ow too…ie this morning in class when I was getting annoyed about none of my keystrokes working and only then remembered I was using windows.
Also, the close buttons being on the opposite side of the window is starting to bug me.
- Command+S, best friend for taking/saving notes in class.
- Command+Arrow keys, Spaces shortcuts how I heart thee.
- Command+N, ever so helpful when rocking the dual monitors while working on papers.
- Command+M, helpful to make sure the prof does not see that you’re only half paying attention.
I never knew that one about reopening the browser window, that’ll help keep track of far too many google scholar windows i hope.
I need a Mac….
awesome! you just made my day with the function + delete command
I LOVE IT
i was SO frustrated with my mac when i discovered where was no backspace button…. awesome!
Thanks for the tips!
On Windows: Ctrl+A, backspace: undo everything :p
Seriously, though: Ctrl+Y: redo. Useful if you hit Ctrl+Z one too many times. I assume this also works with Command+Y but cannot test it as I have no Mac.
@Chris – yep command + y is “redo” on a Mac
this is so perfect! I started a new job today, and was given a pc laptop. I was at a complete loss most of the day – fumble fingers. How refreshing to come home to my mac plus all these mac tips!
Mac keyboards have changed over the years too, but I do wish that on PCs the Control key was where the Caps Lock key usually is — that’s the old-school computing way, and makes more sense given how little people use Caps Lock these days.
I type pretty fast, but never took typing in school, so my technique is a mess. My right hand roams, and covers about 2/3 of the keys (over to T, G, and B), while my left hand stays still and covers the rest. Space is always the right thumb. But it works.
What’s funny is if you were to use a PC again, you’d probably transparently readjust. At least, that’s what I find myself doing at work. I make the odd mistake, but I somehow do things differently without even thinking about it.
Creepy.
type in the website you wanna view in IE and hit CRTL-Enter. voila the http://www…..com magically appears. only works w/ .com though