Keyboard shortcuts worth learning in Write by Zaweba
Shortcuts in Write by Zaweba for headings, moving paragraphs, footnotes, links and more, with AltGr left alone so accented letters still type.
Reaching for the mouse breaks your train of thought. A few keyboard shortcuts let you shape a document without lifting your hands from the keys, and Write by Zaweba follows the standard word processor shortcuts, so much of what you already know works straight away.
Where to find them all
Help > Keyboard shortcuts lists every shortcut in the app. It is worth a look once, then again a week later, picking up two or three new ones each time. Trying to learn them all at once rarely sticks.
Shortcuts for structure
Headings have their own keys. Ctrl+Alt+1, Ctrl+Alt+2 and Ctrl+Alt+3 apply the first three heading levels. Marking headings as you type means the navigation pane and the table of contents fill themselves, with no need to go back and style anything.
Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down move the current paragraph up or down past its neighbours. That is the quickest way to reorder items in a list or swap two paragraphs, without cutting and pasting.
There are standard shortcuts for indents and for a hanging indent, the layout used in reference lists, and for changing font sizes up and down.
Shortcuts for inserting things
Ctrl+K adds a hyperlink to the selected text, and Ctrl+click follows it. Ctrl+Alt+F inserts a footnote. There are shortcuts for today's date, the time and a page number, which save opening a dialog when you just want the date at the top of a letter.
Dashes and common symbols, including copyright, registered, trademark and an ellipsis, have shortcuts too, so you get the proper character without hunting through the Symbol dialog.
Shortcuts for text
Shift+F3 cycles the selected text through the case options, from sentence case to lower case to capitals and more. It rescues text typed with Caps Lock on in a couple of key presses.
Extra shortcuts give all caps, small caps and double underline, effects that have no toolbar button of their own.
Ctrl+Shift+8 shows and hides formatting marks. F9 updates a table of contents. F11 turns on focus mode, full screen with just the pages. Ctrl+Alt+A opens the Ask AI panel if you have connected your own AI account.
AltGr is left alone
On many keyboards outside the United States, the AltGr key types accented letters and other characters, such as the euro sign. Some programs claim AltGr combinations for their own shortcuts, so a Welsh, French or German writer finds that a key they need does something unexpected instead.
Write leaves AltGr alone. Accented and other characters still type on every keyboard layout, exactly as they do in other programs. If you write in Welsh or regularly type names with accents, you can do so without fighting the app.
Building the habit
Pick the shortcuts that match what you do most. Someone writing reports will get the most from the heading keys and F9. Someone writing letters will use the date shortcut and Shift+F3. Someone editing lists will love Alt+Shift+Up and Down.
Put a sticky note by the screen with the three you are learning this week. Once they are automatic, swap in three more. Within a month you will be working noticeably faster, and on the Mac and Linux versions the same shortcuts use the Cmd key where Mac users would expect it.
