The Grafx Blogs

Many typists like to learn the many keyboard shortcuts OS X has to offer, as I do. There are hundreds of them, and they are generally pretty well publicised. There is one that isn’t however.

We all know how to copy and paste right? Command+C to copy to the clipboard, Command+V to paste from the clipboard. There is another way though; a secret clipboard in OS X. Using this secret clipboard will not effect your main clipboard, meaning you can copy two things at once.

There is a nuance to this however. This trick will cut everything from wherever you are in the document, to the end of that paragraph. Cutting is a method of copying and deleting what it is you copied.Remember, anything you cut will be removed, but copied to your clipboard.

So try copying some of this text and pasting it into Word or TextEdit. Select a place in the middle of a paragraph and use the keyboard shortcut Control+K. Go to another place in the document and use the shortcut Control+Y to paste the text you just cut.

It’s far more difficult to explain than it is to do, and it’s not something you would use all the time. That said, if you are a writer, or typing 2 or more paragraphs of text and occasionally think you should rearrange your argument then it’s well worth learning.