Selecting Text: Part 3

Deselecting text

Knowing how to deselect text is perhaps most useful when you've selected too much and you don't want to have to go through the process of selecting again.

To deselect text efficiently, you'll have to remember what you've learnt in Part 1 and Part 2 of this tutorial. Luckily, the keyboard shorcuts and mouse clicks are all the same.

Techniques used (see Part 1 and Part 2):

Character selection
Word selection
Paragraph selection
Document selection
Click-and-dragging
Shift-clicking

Deselecting text

To deselect text, select it in reverse!  For example, triple click the paragraph below to select it.

This is a little tricky:  if you press Shift + Left, you will select one character to the left.  If you select this whole paragraph again and press Shift + Right, you will select one character to the right--but don't panic.  This is where selecting in reverse comes in.

Your Mac remembers which way you are selecting text when you use your keyboard, so you can deselect text just by changing direction.  If you use your mouse to select an initial piece of text, however, your Mac will assume by that you are trying to select more text.  But, if you start selecting text in one direction then immediately start going the other way, you'll start deselecting, just as promised.

Going left then right may not seem very productive, but if you select this paragraph then press Shift + Left to go one character left, and then you press Option + Shift + Right then Shift + Down, you can see that you can select and deselect quickly.

You can also use shift-clicking and click-and-dragging to deselect text after you've selected it. Give it a try!

That's it! What you've learned in this tutorial works for documents and webpages, even when you can't see the blinking cursor. Use the shortcuts and clicks like you've learnt here, trust your instincts, and soon you'll be selecting and deselecting at the SpeedofMac. (Was that too cheesy?)

Notes:

This tutorial covered methods of selecting adjacent text because these techniques work just about everywhere (webpages, forms, documents, etc.).

Selecting non-adjacent text (e.g. two words from separate paragraphs) is possible in most word-processing programmes (Microsoft Word, Apple's Pages, OpenOffice Writer). To do this, make your initial selection, then hold Command ( command ) while making additional selections.