Translation Services How-To

MS Word ShortCuts

Working for a busy translation agency, a common request is to provide translations back in a universal format that our clients can then use to set the text on an alternative platform, or save for a later time. Most commonly this universal format is MS Word, and apart for the cross compatibility of some Word files types (e.g. docx etc) this works well. Once the translation is complete one of our project team will proof the translation, ensuring it confirms to our quality assurance system.

Normally our translators are able to perform basic formatting functions within MS Word, however occasionally we will be called upon to process this as well during the proofing procedure. We have found this process of proof-checking and formatting documents can be greatly sped up by the use of keyboard short-cuts. This article shares our top 10 keyboard short-cuts for using MS word. At PS, although our studio is mostly Mac platform based for editing of MS word files we use PC's. We've used a number of versions of Word over the years and these shortcuts should work with all version of Word from 97-2007.

Find and Fast Find. It lets you find occurrences of specific queries without the need to have the 'Find' dialogue box open. To use this function simply use the find function (Ctrl+F) and type in your query to find the first occurrence. Once found, select 'cancel' or Esc. To find subsequent occurrences of your query, simple select Shift+F4.

Paragraph centring - although fairly easy to select the paragraph centre option from the formatting menu - for times when you have this option hidden from the menu bar or you do not want your hands to leave the keyboard - select Ctrl+E. Very simple but does really speed things up if you have a lengthy document to format.

Other paragraph formatting - as well as the Ctrl+E for centring text- Ctrl+L will align the text to the left margin, Crtl+R will align to the right and Ctrl+J will justify the text.

Changing the case of text - Occasionally when text is copied from one application to another, it retains some of the original formatting from the source document. This can be a pain to then have to reformat in word, especially if capitalisation of the text has occurred. A useful keyboard shortcut for altering the case of text is the Shift+F3 shortcut. First select the text you wish to format and then select Shift+F3 - this will alternate between uppercase, lowercase and first letter capitalised only.

Speedy specific delete - People seem to take different approaches to deleing text. Some select the text they want to remove and select the 'delete' key. Others will use the back space until all required characters/text has been deleted. One way to speed this process up is to use the Ctrl key in conjunction with either delete or backspace. Using Ctrl+Delete deletes text from the insertion point to the end of the next word, Ctrl+Backspace deletes words to the left of the insertion point.

Adding a 'Copyright' mark. This one is really simple and can be very useful. To add a Copyright mark to your document select the shortcut - Ctlr+Alt+C.

Switching open documents - If you work from a number of documents at the same time the shortcut Ctrl+F6 is a really useful keyboard shortcut to switch between documents.

Increasing/decreasing font size. To increase font size, first select the text you would like to alter .Select Ctrl+] to increase the font size. To decrease the font size select Ctrl+[.

Show and hide formatting characters (tab marks, spaces etc).To show or hide formatting charters (characters that are not printed but used to indicate where text is formated) select Shift+Ctrl+8.

Print a list of keyboard shortcuts - Its handy to know what keyboard shortcuts you have assigned to which keys. To see a printed list - select Ctrl+P - then from 'Print what' - select 'key assignments'.

Download our Keyboard Shortcut 'cheat sheet'

Tags: Foreign langauge typesetting services, Proofreading, Technical translation services, Editing Services

Author: TomWC