Computer Shortcuts That Make Life Just a Little Easier

 

As life continues to go down an electronic path, I think it is important to share some shortcuts that have helped me do my work and scroll the internet faster. I use my computer more than I am proud to admit. I use it to play video games, but also to do most of my classwork. I live pretty far from campus, therefore I try to do as many online classes as I can if I can’t find a schedule that makes the hour drive worth it. Here are a couple of keyboard shortcuts that I use almost every day that I think anyone who is using a computer should know:

Select All

I think everyone has had the experience where you are trying to type something into the search bar of your search engine or are typing and you find yourself needing to erase the whole text. Instead of using your mouse to click and drag to make the blue box appear around the text, simply use CTRL (this would be Command for Mac users) and ‘A’. This highlights all the text you are currently working with. Now you can click backspace and you delete your text faster.

Oh no! I closed my Google Chrome Tabs!

Everyone has felt the gut-wrenching feeling of closing their Chrome tabs when finding articles for their research paper or scrolling through hours of social media. That’s okay though! Not a lot of people know this, but if you accidentally close your tabs, there is a way to get them back. Simply open up Google Chrome again and do CTRL+SHIFT+T. This reopens every tab you had open before closing your Chrome.

New Tab

This one is fairly simple. If you ever want to open a new tab to search for something else without closing your tab, you can simply click on the plus sign next to the old tab. But, that's old-school. If you are too lazy to reach for your mouse, like me, then do CTRL+T to open a new tab and get to searching right away. 

 Check what you have copied

This is something that is only for Windows users (sorry Mac enthusiasts). If you ever copied something on accident before pasting what you originally had copied, there is a way to bring up everything you have copied before. Click the Windows Key+V on your keyboard and a little window will open up showing you what you have clicked “Copy” on since the last time you turned your computer on.

Copy and Paste

I think everyone should know this one by now. But, if you don’t, here it is. If you ever have to copy a quote from an article to use it in your paper, simply highlight the quote with your mouse and hold the CTRL key on your keyboard, Mac users hold the Command key, and click the letter ‘C’ on your keyboard. This will automatically copy anything that is highlighted. Now, go to your document and click where you want to have the quote, and click CTRL+V. This will paste everything that you copied into your document.