A few weeks ago, I was training some clients in how to update their new WordPress site. They were pretty tech savvy and most of what I showed them was variations on things they already knew. But one thing - an aside really - got their attention. When I told them that they could use Ctrl-Shift-V (Cmd-Shift-V on a Mac) to paste text without formatting, they became nearly giddy, saying “I always wanted to know how to do that” and “this is the best thing I’ve learned all week”.

So why all the excitement over a simple keyboard command? Let’s back up and define the problem.

When a block of text is highlighted and copied, either with the mouse using Edit > Copy or keyboard using Ctrl-C, more than just the text is moved to the clipboard. It also copies the formatting of the text, including the font, color and paragraph layout. For example, I copied the following text from a web page: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” and this was the pasted output:

<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: q_serif, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 15px;">The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.</span>

When pasted like this, the text keeps the formatting of the document it was copied from. Nine times out of ten, this is not what you want; you want the text to inherit the formatting of the document it has been pasted to.

Many programs, including WordPress and all of the Google applications, have adopted the Ctrl-Shift-V (Cmd-Shift-V for Mac) keyboard command to do just that. The contents of the clipboard are pasted with all of the formatting commands stripped out. This is especially useful when copying text from Microsoft Word, which is notorious for surrounding text with lots of dense, proprietary formatting code. Ctrl-Shift-V to the rescue, whether you’re pasting the text into an email or WordPress post.

Microsoft Word itself is a notable exception to this convention, but there is a workaround. You can create a custom keyboard shortcut, so that Ctrl-Shift-V works there too:

• Right click on the ribbon
• "Customize the Ribbon"
• "Keyboard Shortcuts: Customize"
• Category: All Commands
• Command: PasteTextOnly
• "Press new shortcut key"
• Ctrl-Shift-V
• "Assign"

Now you know how to avoid one of life’s minor annoyances, while keeping your documents squeaky clean and free of extraneous formatting code. You’re welcome.

Until next week...