I use Readline bindings (also known as E-Macs binding) on a daily basis.

They are supported in all Cocoa applications. They’ve been there for ages and I’ve used them since day one. Even some non-cocoa applications support them, though not all. Recently that was Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac. After some researching, I’ve found out how to make keyboard shortcuts in MS Word, so I can use Word, just like I expect. Here’s how:

In MS Word 2011 for Mac go to:

  • Tools > Customize Keyboard
  • Select All Commands under Categories:
  • Select the command under Commands:.
  • Press the keyboard shortcut in the Press new keyboard shortcut box
  • Click the Assign button

The commands I use are:

  • Ctrl+e EndOfLine
  • Ctrl+a StartOfLine
  • Ctrl+p LineUp
  • Ctrl+n LineDown
  • Ctrl+b CharLeft
  • Ctrl+f CharRight
  • Ctrl+k DeleteToEndOfLine (as a macro)
  • Ctrl+k TransposeCharacters (as a macro)

Two of my favourite commands are missing as default commands:

  • DeleteToEndOfLine to delete the rest of the line and,
  • TransposeCharacters transposing two characters.

We have to implement them as macro’s, which follow the same steps as above (just replace Categories with Macro’s). Here are the macros:

Sub TransposeCharacters()
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wd Character, Count:=1, _
      Extend:= wdExtend
    Selection.Cut
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:= wdCharacter, Count:=1
    Selection.Paste
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:= wdCharacter, Count:=1
End Sub
Sub DeleteToEndOfLine()
  Selection.MoveEnd Unit:= wdLine
  If Selection.Characters.Last = vbCr Then
    Selection.MoveEnd Unit:= wdCharacter, Count:=-1
  End If
  Selection.Text = ""
End Sub