The most successful (and memorable) keyboard shortcuts are pictograms, such as the easy-to-see scissor-like X (as in Ctrl+X) for cutting something out or Ctrl+V for pasting something in (see the proofreader's classic insert mark in the V?)

But those are the very rare success stories. Most keyboard shortcuts are not nearly as intuitive, and you'll have to really train your finger brains to "think" the shortcuts' ways. Once your fingers "know" what to do, they'll do it no matter what. And that's great -- unless you switch to a similar application where the shortcuts either don't work anymore or have another function altogether. One group of similar competing applications where this has largely been prevented are web browsers. No matter whether you are using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Opera, many of the same keyboard shortcuts apply. A group of applications where this has not been done very successfully in the past are translation environment tools. Fortunately, the latest releases of many of these tools now offer customizable shortcuts (including Wordfast, Trados, memoQ, and Déjà Vu). Still, it would be great not to have to actually know how to change the keyboard shortcuts but simply to expect certain things to happen when pressing certain keyboard shortcuts -- but that's probably too much to expect at this point.

For this reason, you won't find too many translation environment tool-specific keyboard shortcuts in this rather random list of shortcuts. Instead, I have focused on web browsers, Windows, MS Office applications, and Acrobat/Adobe Reader -- apps most of us use all the time.

In all versions of Windows prior to Windows XP, Windows menus used underscores (as in File) to indicate Alt key shortcuts. For folks who don't like their mice, these "menu accelerators" can save a lot of time and trouble: it's much faster to press Alt+F and then A than to take your hands off the keyboard, grab your mouse, and click File, Save As, and then go back to the keyboard to enter a file name. And you didn't even have to memorize these shortcuts; they were always displayed on the screen. In later versions of Windows, some programs removed the menu accelerators, especially those with "ribbons" rather than menus (such as the Office 2007 and 2010 applications). But though they're invisible, they're still there, and they will be displayed when you press the Alt key. If you are using one of the ribbon programs, you need only to press the associated key to enter the respective task or ribbon.

Remember Ctrl+Alt+Delete in earlier versions of Windows to access the Task Manager from where you can "kill" annoying or stalling programs? Well, you can still use that, but now you are presented with a menu of sorts from which you can access the Task Manager. At least one step too many!

The "new" Ctrl+Alt+Delete? Try Ctrl+Shift+Esc!

There were always numerous ways to minimize all applications and get to the desktop, but they all required either two clicks of the mouse or a keyboard shortcut. Typically a keyboard shortcut is what you want, except on the desktop where you'll want to do something with your mouse anyway. In Windows 7, however, there is a little button to the very right of your time/date display that will open your desktop (and then go back to your previous application when you click it again). And if you select the right-click option Peek at desktop, you can just hold your mouse over the button to look at your desktop rather than actually selecting it.

If you do want to use a keyboard shortcut for this, you would use the combination WinKey (the key with the Windows logo on most keyboards) +M. But there are also plenty of other WinKey combinations that are interesting. Here are the most interesting ones:

• WinKey -- Open the Start menu

• WinKey +E -- Display Windows Explorer

• WinKey +R -- Display the Run dialog box

In Windows 7 the WinKey was super-charged, so here are some other uses (some of these also relate to Windows Vista):

• WinKey +Up (Down) -- Maximize (Restore / Minimize) your current window

• WinKey +Left (Right) -- Snap your current window to the left (right)

• WinKey +Space -- Peek at the desktop

• WinKey +P -- External display options

• WinKey +X -- Open Mobility Center (access to things like brightness, volume, battery, wireless connectivity, external display, etc.)

• WinKey + + -- Zoom in to 200% (WINKEY + - goes back to 100%).

• WinKey +<Number> -- Launch a new instance of the application in the Nth slot on the taskbar

• Shift+WinKey +<Number> -- Open a second instance of the application that corresponds to that number on the taskbar

• Ctrl+WinKey +<Number> -- Open the last active window of the application that corresponds to that number on the taskbar

There are also a number of helpful shortcuts within Windows that involve dragging an item. For instance, when you select a file within Windows Explorer or any other file display within Windows and drag that file with your left mouse button while pressing Ctrl+Shift, the operation creates a shortcut to the file (which can then be copied to the desktop, the Start menu, the Send to folder -- see below -- or elsewhere).

If you use just the Ctrl key rather than Ctrl+Shift, an actual copy of the file is generated rather than a shortcut of the file. As soon as you start to drag your file, you can see a little plus icon appear beside your cursor, indicating that Windows will copy that item rather than just move it.

Both of these actions work with files as well as with complete folders and also with objects (such as text or images) within most applications -- very helpful when you need to copy text from source to target in a translation environment tool!

The following are weird but very effective shortcuts: imagine you want to go to your Fonts folder to manage your fonts. Of course, you could painfully navigate to that folder (if you remember where it's located). But you could also press the WinKey+R (WinKey only if you are using Windows Vista and 7) and enter shell:fonts. Tada! Cool, huh? Windows Explorer opens right there!

This little time saver does not work with every kind of folder, but it does with virtually any of the common Windows folders. Here are some examples with their "shell commands":

• Documents/My Documents (shell:Personal)
• Printers (shell:PrintersFolder)
• Program Files (shell:ProgramFiles)
• SendTo folder (shell:SendTo)

And since we're talking about the SendTo folder: you can add a shortcut to any drive or any program to the places listed under the right-click option Send to in Windows Explorer to either send a file there or have a file open in that program. All you need to do is open the Sendto folder (either by using the shell command above or by navigating to Documents and Settings/<user> in Windows XP, and Users/<user>/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows in Windows Vista and 7). You can delete any of the existing shortcuts or add links to any program you would like to have listed there.

• Alt+V followed by U for Microsoft Word (all versions) 

• Ctrl+Shift+J for OpenOffice

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My two favorite shortcuts while creating documents in PowerPoint are Ctrl+M for a new slide and Ctrl+D to duplicate the existing slide. Most of you probably knew that, but many might not know these (as you are displaying a slide show):

• B -- makes your screen go black

• W -- makes your screen go white (the choice of which depends on the color of the underlying screen)

These shortcuts are fantastic when you need to have your audience focus on you rather than the screen.

Another helpful shortcut for PowerPoint:

• Shift+F5 -- opens the slide show at the currently selected slide

Even experienced presenters don't seem to know this shortcut and instead waste valuable time and attention as they mess around with their mice to accomplish the same thing.

Some keyboard shortcuts in Acrobat are similar to other Windows-based programs, including the typical ones for Save (Ctrl+S), Find (Ctrl+F), and Print (Ctrl+P). It's different, however, if you want to access one of the many "tools" that Adobe Acrobat and Reader offer to work with your PDF files. These are not nearly as intuitively accessible as they are in other programs until you know how to access them.

To get to these through your keyboard, you need to select Edit> Preferences> General> Use single-key accelerators to access tools. After you've done that, all of the tools to edit, highlight, and annotate data in your file can be accessed with a single key (such as the Note tool with S or the Highlight tool with U; all of the necessary keys are displayed in tool tips). To deselect a certain tool, simply hit the escape key.

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© 2010 International Writers' Group