How to Move the Cursor by Word, Line, and Paragraph on Mac

Step by step

1. 10 sec

   Move one word at a time

   Hold Option and press the Left or Right Arrow key. The cursor jumps to the boundary of the previous or next word instead of moving one character. Hold Option down and keep tapping the arrow to cross a full line in a few presses.

   Note: Word boundaries are decided by the text engine, not by you. Punctuation and hyphens count as boundaries in most native fields.
2. 10 sec

   Jump to the line start or end

   Hold Command and press the Left or Right Arrow key. The cursor moves to the beginning or the end of the current line. In a wrapped paragraph this means the line you can see on screen, not the whole paragraph.

   Note: This is the one people reach for after dragging a mouse to the end of a line for the tenth time in a morning.
3. 10 sec

   Jump to the top or bottom

   Hold Command and press the Up or Down Arrow key. The cursor moves to the very beginning or the very end of the document. In a single-line field such as a search box there is nowhere to go, so nothing happens.

   Note: Scrolling and moving the cursor are two different acts. This moves the cursor, so whatever you type next lands where you jumped.
4. 10 sec

   Move one paragraph at a time

   Hold Option and press the Up or Down Arrow key. The cursor moves to the start of the previous paragraph or the start of the next one. This is the useful middle gear between a single line and the whole document.

   Note: A paragraph here is a block ended by a Return, not a block you see on screen. Soft-wrapped lines are ignored.
5. 15 sec

   Add Shift to select instead of move

   Hold Shift along with any combination above and the cursor drags a selection behind it instead of travelling alone. Shift with Option selects by word. Shift with Command selects to the end of the line or the document. The rules do not otherwise change.

   Note: Every one of these movements has a Shift twin. Learn four movements and you have quietly learned eight commands.
6. 10 sec

   Use the Control key text bindings

   Press Control + A to move to the start of the current paragraph and Control + E to move to its end. In a single-line field such as a search box that is the whole field. In a soft-wrapped paragraph it is the paragraph, not the line you see on screen.

   Note: These came out of terminals, where Control + A and Control + E still do the same job. That is the only reason they survived into the Cocoa text system.