One of the best time savers in computing is the oft misunderstood process cutting or copying text, pictures and files and pasting them into a new location. Cutting and copying share a common property in that both operations put the targeted object in memory for immediate use. The difference is that cutting removes the object from its original location while copying leaves it in place.

You may wonder why the Paste bottle is upside down. I teach my students to use keyboard shortcuts. So it’s easy to remember Ctrl+X for cut, because an X looks rather like scissors; and C for copy (Ctrl+C) because copy starts with C; but where is the V (Ctrl+V) in Paste? You have to turn the glue bottle upside down to paste, right? So look for a V in the tip.

Selecting objects is also commonly done via right-clicking on PCs and control-clicking on a Mac. Be sure to check out “Pop-up Menus the Right-Click Way” if you’re mainly a mouse user.

To cut or copy an object it must first be selected. You don’t have to be a novice to miss that step. My eyes are great at selecting stuff on a computer screen, but I still have to click or drag my mouse to make the computer understand me. For instance, if I’m selecting text I might drag my mouse from the beginning of the first word to the end of the last, or double-left-click a single word, or triple-left-click a paragraph. Or if I want a picture I might drag my mouse pointer from the top left corner to the bottom right, or sometimes simply right-click if I want the whole picture. If on the other hand I want a complete file I would navigate to that file, right-click and choose copy. (Hint: In Windows use the Snipping Tool and on a Mac use the Grab utility to select pictures from your computer screen.)

With an object in memory it can be pasted into a selected location. There’s that darn selection process again. When selecting a spot to paste an object I need to see a blinking cursor if pasting into a text document, because that’s where my paste will take me. Then I can choose how the object reacts with any text already in place. When pasting onto a blank canvas of an image application you usually need only to be sure your app has the focus. In either case you can move your object around by dragging it with your mouse.

You can do it!