Selecting Text with the OS X Keyboard

I recently had a switcher friend ask me about selecting and moving around in text in OS X. It occurred to me that there are probably a lot of new Mac users abusing their arrows keys as a result of not knowing how to select text so here is a quick review.

Moving by the letter ...

Arrow Keys

Selecting one letter at a time ...

Shift + Arrow Keys

Moving one word at a time ...

Option + Arrow Keys (right and left)

Selecting one word at a time ...

Shift + Option + Arrow Keys (right and left)

Moving one paragraph at a time ...

Option + Arrow Keys (up and down)

Selecting one paragraph at a time ...

Shift + Option + Arrow Keys (up and down)

Move to Top or Bottom ...

Command + Arrow (up and down)

Select to Top or Bottom ...

Shift + Command + Arrow (up and down)

Move to Front/End of Line ...

Command + Arrow (right and left)

Select to Front/End of Line ...

Shift + Command + Arrow (right and left)

Did I miss anything?

Comments

[Jono]

Thanks, I knew a couple of these but not all of them. I'd been looking around recently for a full list.

[Gazmaz]

Yeah a biggy for me was the # key which is alt 3 in OS x. :-)

[isen]

Some emacs shortcuts will work in some apps too.

I typically use ctrl-d (forward delete), -a (go to beginning of line) -e (go to end of line), -k (kill), and -y (yank).