Editing text

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. You typed a two page project, and your teacher says, change the name Mumbai to Surat everywhere. Will you retype it? No. Today we learn to edit text quickly in a word processor.

First, what does editing mean? Editing means changing text that is already typed. We can insert new words, delete words, move or copy text, and replace words. For most of these jobs, we must select the text first. Changing how text looks, like bold or colour, is called formatting, and we will learn it separately.

Text can be typed in two modes. In insert mode, new letters push the old text to the right, and nothing is lost. In overwrite mode, new letters replace the letters after the cursor. The Insert key on the keyboard switches between the two modes, and Writer shows the mode on the status bar. If your typing starts eating words, press Insert once.

Next, deleting. Backspace removes the letter to the left of the cursor. Delete removes the letter to the right. To remove a whole sentence or paragraph, select it first and press Delete once. If you delete something by mistake, press Control plus Z immediately.

Moving and copying use a new term, the clipboard. The clipboard is a temporary memory where the computer keeps text that you cut or copy. It holds the last item you cut or copied, and a new cut replaces it. Paste places the clipboard text at the cursor, and you can paste the same text many times.

These three commands are in the Edit menu and on the toolbar. Cut, Control plus X, removes the selected text and keeps it on the clipboard. Copy, Control plus C, keeps the original and puts a copy on the clipboard. Paste, Control plus V, puts the clipboard text where the cursor is.

So how do we choose? To move a line to another place, we cut it, click at the new place and paste. The line disappears from the old place. To repeat a line, like a school name on every page, we copy it, click and paste. The original line stays where it was.

Everyone makes mistakes, so word processors give us Undo and Redo. Undo, Control plus Z, cancels your last action. You can press it again and again to go back several steps. Redo, Control plus Y, brings back the action you just undid.

Time to predict. You type the words good morning. You select the word morning and press Control plus X. Then you press Control plus Z, and then Control plus Y. What is left on the page? Undo brings morning back, but Redo cuts it again, so only the word good is left.

Now our title problem. Open Edit, then Find and Replace, or press Control plus H. In the Find box, type the word you are looking for, Mumbai. In the Replace box, type the new word, Surat. Click Replace to change one at a time, or Replace All to change every Mumbai in the document. Replace All is fast, so read the result once.

Find and Replace has two useful options. Match case makes capital and small letters count, so Ram will not match RAM. Whole words only finds the word alone, so cat will not match the letters inside education. These options stop the computer from replacing the wrong text.

The last editing tool is the spelling check. A red wavy line under a word means it is not in the dictionary. Right-click the word to see suggested spellings. Tools, then Spelling, or the F7 key, checks the whole document. Names like Bhavesh may be marked wrong, so think before you accept a suggestion.

Let us recap. The Insert key switches between insert mode and overwrite mode. Cut is Control plus X, Copy is Control plus C and Paste is Control plus V. Undo is Control plus Z and Redo is Control plus Y. Find and Replace, Control plus H, changes a word everywhere. For spelling, press F7 or right-click the red wavy lines.