Editing text is tedious work. Use these two shortcuts to delete whole words instead of single characters.

Many users delete text the hard way-character by character. Fortunately, there are many editing shortcuts, and I'd like to share two that transform [Backspace] and [Delete] into deleting machines.

[Ctrl]+[Backspace]

Pressing [Backspace] deletes the characters to the left of the insertion point, one at a time. When you need to delete an entire word, press [Ctrl]+[Backspace]. This shortcut deletes text to the left of the insertion point one word at a time instead of one character at a time. For instance, to delete the last four words in a paragraph, including the ending period character, you'd hold down [Ctrl] and press [Backspace] five times. (Word counts a punctuation mark as a word.)

[Ctrl]+[Delete]

Pressing [Delete] removes the characters to the right of the insertion point, one character at a time. To delete several characters to the right, at once, press [Ctrl]+[Delete]. This combo deletes all the characters to the right of the insertion point in the current word. For instance, to remove cut in the word shortcut, you'd position the insertion point between the t and the c, and press [Ctrl]+[Delete].

What deleting shortcuts do you use?