Whilst life itself is cram packed with stuff you have to do, there are things in Word that people do that they don't have to, and here are some things to try (or not try)...

1. Worry. You don't have to worry about doing something wrong. Just get familiar with the program and experiment with Word features. If something looks wrong or funny, that's when you use the Undo feature. Press or type the wrong thing, try [Ctrl]Z to undo whatever you did. Always remember you can press [Ctrl]Z or choose Undo from the Edit menu to undo changes one at a time. Aside from deleting a file or failing to save a file, there's almost nothing you can do that isn't reversible.

2. Use Microsoft's conventions. You don't have to use the term "insertion point." Just call it the cursor. That blinking thing that tells you where the stuff you type goes. Anything but "insertion point."

3. Move your hands from the keyboard. You don't have to use the mouse to do things like open menus, select or format text, or move the cursor. You may find you work more efficiently if you're not always moving your hand from the keyboard to the mouse. Press [Home] to move to the beginning of the current line, [End] to move to the end of the current line. Press [Ctrl] and the left or right arrow to move one word in either direction. Hold down [Shift] while pressing those keys to select the text between the cursor and the beginning or the end of the line, respectively.

4. Select the entire paragraph to change formatting or style. You don't have to select the entire paragraph to change the paragraph's formatting or style. Just click anywhere in the paragraph and choose the desired format or style. A good example is justification. Just click anywhere in the paragraph, then click the Align Left, Align Right, or Justify button on the Standard toolbar.

5. Work in one document at a time. You don't have to close one Word document before you open another. Open as many at a time as you want to. Use the [Ctrl][F6] keyboard shortcut or the Windows menu to move quickly between open documents.

6. Risk missing something you're looking for. You don't have to visually scan and manually scroll through a document looking for a word or phrase. Use [Ctrl]F to open the Find tab, and let Word locate the text for you.

7. Waste time during spelling check. You don't have to repeatedly click Ignore or Ignore All every time the spell-checker stops on a proper noun or a term that's commonly used in your documents. Click Add so you don't waste time checking the same words over and over.

8. Delete old text you're replacing. If you're selecting a big block of text that you're planning to replace with new text, you don't have to delete the old text first. Select the old text and start typing the new text. The first keystroke replaces the old selected text. Don't waste time pressing [Delete] first.

9. Press [Backspace] over and over. You don't have to press [Backspace] a dozen times to delete a word or phrase. If you type something and then change your mind, pressing [Ctrl][Backspace] to delete a word at a time is much faster than pressing [Backspace] over and over again. There's only one thing more wasteful: using the mouse to click on the beginning of the word or phrase and then pressing [Delete] repeatedly. If you get overzealous with [Ctrl][Backspace] and delete one word too many, press [Ctrl]Z to bring it right back.

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