Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Five Ways to Type Less

At first glance, the Word window looks much like any computer screen. You type, and letters appear, just as in that classic Mac word processor, TextEdit. But there’s actually much more to it than that. While you’re typing, Word is constantly thinking, reacting, doing things to save you precious keystrokes.

As noted earlier, for example, Word corrects obvious spelling errors as you go along. But it also lets you create your own typing shortcuts, and even tries to anticipate your next formatting move, sometimes to the frustration of people who don’t understand what the program’s doing. The more you know what Word is thinking (it means well, it really does), the more you can let Word do the work, saving those precious brain cells for more important stuff—like writing or remembering to get the kids to soccer practice.

Click and Type

In olden days, our screens gave us a continually blinking insertion point, located in the upper-left corner of the screen. That’s where you typed, no questions asked or answers given. If you wanted to type in the middle of the page—for example, to create a title page of a report—you couldn’t just click there and start typing.

Instead, you had to take the ludicrously counterintuitive step of moving the insertion point over and down by tapping the Space bar, Tab key, or Return key until it was where you wanted it.

But in Word 2008, "Click and Type” assists location-challenged typists the world over by letting them reach their desired insertion ...