Stop Backspacing One Letter at a Time: Faster Deletes

You write a few words, decide they are junk, and hold down the backspace key while the cursor nibbles away one letter at a time. We all do it. It is also slow, and there is a much faster way. Two shortcuts will fix this for good.

Delete a whole word

Instead of pecking one character at a time, wipe out an entire word with a single tap. On a Mac, press Option and Delete. On a PC, press Ctrl and Backspace. Hold it down and it keeps eating words instead of letters, which is the upgrade most people feel immediately.

Clear a whole line

When the whole sentence is a write-off, take it all out at once. On a Mac, press Command and Delete to clear back to the start of the line. On a PC, press Ctrl and Shift and the Up Arrow to select the line, then Backspace to remove it. A little awkward at first, still faster than holding the key down.

Give it a day or two and the muscle memory sets in. After that you will not go back, and you will spend a little less of your day watching a cursor crawl. Book a call if you want more ways to get your team moving faster on the tools they already use.