Google Docs Text Formatting Shortcuts
Google Docs' character-level formatting shortcuts converge heavily with Word's, since bold, italic, and underline are among the most universally standardized keyboard conventions across virtually every text editor ever built — where Docs distinguishes itself is in features with no real desktop-word-processor equivalent, like the Explore research panel, that reflect its identity as a browser-native, internet-connected tool rather than a strict formatting-only editor.
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toggle bold | Ctrl+B | Cmd+B | Standard bold toggle, identical in behavior to Word's equivalent shortcut and one of a small handful of formatting bindings the two editors share directly without variation. |
| Toggle italic | Ctrl+I | Cmd+I | Standard italic toggle for the current selection, matching the same convention shared across virtually every text editor on this site. |
| Toggle underline | Ctrl+U | Cmd+U | Underlines the selected text, the third of the three most universally recognized text-formatting shortcuts alongside bold and italic. |
| Clear formatting | Ctrl+\ | Cmd+\ | Strips character formatting from the selection back to the document's default style, distinct in binding from Word's Ctrl+Spacebar but serving the exact same purpose of resetting inconsistent or pasted-in formatting. |
| Insert link | Ctrl+K | Cmd+K | Opens the link insertion dialog for the current selection or cursor position, accepting both pasted URLs and a live search of other Google Docs and Drive files to link directly to. |
| Insert footnote | Ctrl+Alt+F | Cmd+Option+F | Inserts a numbered footnote reference at the cursor position and moves focus to the footnote text area at the bottom of the page, ready to type its content immediately. |
| Toggle strikethrough | Alt+Shift+5 | Cmd+Shift+X | Draws a line through the selected text, commonly used to visibly mark something as removed or rejected while keeping it readable, rather than deleting it outright and losing that context. |
| Open Explore panel | Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I | Cmd+Option+Shift+I | Opens Google's Explore sidebar, which suggests relevant web search results, images, and related Drive files based on the document's content — a research-assist feature with no direct Word equivalent. |
Bold (Ctrl+B / Cmd+B), italic (Ctrl+I / Cmd+I), and underline (Ctrl+U / Cmd+U) are identical in both binding and behavior to Word's equivalents, reflecting decades-old conventions that predate either specific application and that most users already carry in from whatever other text editor they learned first.
Clearing formatting (Ctrl+\ / Cmd+\) strips character-level formatting from a selection back to the document's default style, which is genuinely useful after pasting text copied from a webpage or another document that brought along inconsistent fonts, sizes, or colors that clash with the current document's style. Word achieves the same result with Ctrl+Spacebar rather than a backslash — a small but real difference worth knowing if switching between the two applications regularly, since muscle memory for one doesn't transfer directly to the other here.
Inserting a link (Ctrl+K / Cmd+K) opens a dialog accepting either a pasted URL or a live search of your own Drive files, letting you link directly to another Google Doc, Sheet, or Slide by typing a few characters of its name rather than needing to separately locate and copy that file's URL first — a genuinely distinct convenience from Word's equivalent link-insertion dialog, which doesn't have this kind of built-in cross-document search.
Footnotes (Ctrl+Alt+F / Cmd+Option+F) insert a numbered reference at the cursor and move focus straight to the footnote text area at the bottom of the page, ready for typing — useful for academic or research-heavy documents that need citations or supplementary notes without cluttering the main body text.
Strikethrough (Alt+Shift+5 on Windows, Cmd+Shift+X on Mac) draws a line through the selected text, commonly used to visibly mark something as rejected or outdated while keeping it legible and in place, rather than deleting it outright and losing the context of what was there and why it changed — genuinely useful during a collaborative editing or brainstorming pass where seeing what was considered and rejected still has value.
The Explore panel (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I / Cmd+Option+Shift+I) is the one shortcut in this category with no meaningful Word parallel — it opens a sidebar that analyzes the document's content and surfaces relevant web search results, images, and related files from your own Drive, functioning as a lightweight built-in research assistant. This only makes sense in a browser-native, always-connected tool like Docs; a traditional desktop word processor with no assumed internet connection has no equivalent feature to offer.
Worth understanding about how these formatting shortcuts interact with Suggesting mode: applying bold, italic, or strikethrough while Suggesting mode is active still visually shows the formatting change immediately, but it's recorded as a colored, attributable suggestion requiring acceptance rather than becoming a permanent part of the document right away — the shortcut itself behaves identically in both modes, but what actually happens to the document as a result depends entirely on which mode is currently active.
A smaller but genuinely useful pairing worth knowing about is copying formatting from one piece of text to another with the paint-format tool (Ctrl+Alt+C to copy, then Ctrl+Alt+V to apply, or the paintbrush icon in the toolbar), which captures the full combination of font, size, color, and other character-level attributes from a selection and reapplies all of it at once elsewhere — considerably faster than manually reapplying several individual formatting shortcuts in sequence to match an existing piece of text exactly.