Word Character & Paragraph Formatting Shortcuts
Word's basic formatting shortcuts are some of the most universally recognized keyboard commands on any computer, since Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I are honored by nearly every text-editing application that exists. The shortcuts here cover the everyday formatting work of writing and cleaning up a document, separate from style-based formatting covered on the Styles & Headings page. Rounding out the core formatting set, underline joins bold and italic as the third essential character toggle, left alignment completes the four paragraph-alignment options, and decreasing font size mirrors the increase shortcut for fine-grained sizing in both directions.
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toggle bold | Ctrl+B | Cmd+B | Applies or removes bold formatting on the selected text or at the cursor for subsequent typing. |
| Toggle italic | Ctrl+I | Cmd+I | Applies or removes italic formatting, commonly used for titles of works, emphasis, or foreign-language terms. |
| Clear all direct formatting | Ctrl+Spacebar | Cmd+Spacebar | Strips manually applied character formatting (bold, italic, font color, size changes) back to whatever the underlying style defines, without removing the paragraph style itself. |
| Center align paragraph | Ctrl+E | Cmd+E | Centers the current paragraph horizontally — commonly used for document titles or pull quotes. |
| Justify paragraph | Ctrl+J | Cmd+J | Stretches text to align flush with both the left and right margins, adding extra space between words as needed — common in print-style layouts and newsletters. |
| Increase font size by 1pt | Ctrl+] | Cmd+] | Bumps the selected text's point size up by exactly one point, finer control than the font-size dropdown's preset jumps. |
| Toggle underline | Ctrl+U | Cmd+U | Applies or removes underline formatting on the selected text, the third of the three most basic character-formatting toggles alongside bold and italic. |
| Left align paragraph | Ctrl+L | Cmd+L | Aligns the current paragraph flush against the left margin, Word's default alignment for most body text in Western-language documents. |
| Decrease font size by 1pt | Ctrl+[ | Cmd+[ | Nudges the selected text's point size down by exactly one point with each press, the reverse of the increase-size shortcut, for the same kind of fine-tuned fitting work but shrinking instead of growing. |
Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, and Ctrl+U (bold, italic, underline) apply or remove character formatting on the current selection, or toggle the formatting state for whatever you type next if nothing is selected. These are toggles, not one-directional switches — pressing Ctrl+B on already-bold text removes the bold, which occasionally surprises people who expect it to be additive.
Paragraph alignment — Ctrl+L for left, Ctrl+E for center, Ctrl+R for right, and Ctrl+J for justify — applies to the entire paragraph the cursor is in, not just selected text, since alignment is a paragraph-level property in Word rather than a character-level one. Justify is worth a specific mention: it stretches the spacing between words so every line (except the last) touches both margins exactly, which gives documents a more typeset, print-style appearance, but can create distractingly uneven word spacing in narrow columns or with long unbreakable words.
Font size adjustment via Ctrl+] and Ctrl+[ increases or decreases the selected text by exactly one point per press, which is finer control than clicking through the font-size dropdown's preset jumps (which often skip from 11 to 12 to 14). This matters when fine-tuning a document to fit an exact page count, where even a half-point difference across many paragraphs can push content onto an extra page.
Clear Formatting (Ctrl+Spacebar on Windows, Cmd+Spacebar on Mac — though Mac's binding is frequently hijacked by Spotlight) strips direct character formatting back to whatever the paragraph's underlying style specifies, without removing the style itself. This is the fastest fix when pasted content arrives with foreign fonts, sizes, or colors baked in: select the pasted text and clear formatting to make it match the surrounding document instantly, rather than manually resetting font, size, and color one at a time.
Ctrl+U for underline completes the trio of universal character-formatting toggles shared with bold and italic — all three follow the exact same on/off toggle behavior, applying to selected text or to subsequent typing if nothing's currently selected, and all three are honored consistently across virtually every text-editing application on any platform, not just Word.
Ctrl+L for left alignment rounds out the full set of four paragraph alignment options alongside center, right, and justify — left is Word's default for most new paragraphs in Western-language documents, so this shortcut is used most often for returning a paragraph back to that default after it's been centered or justified for some other purpose, like a title or pull quote that needs the surrounding body text restored to standard alignment afterward.
Ctrl+[ decreases font size by exactly one point per press, the precise mirror of Ctrl+]'s increase behavior, useful for the same fine page-count-fitting adjustments in reverse — shrinking a document's overall text size by a point or two across many paragraphs can be the difference between spilling onto an unwanted extra page and fitting cleanly within a required page limit.
Superscript and subscript, while not part of the core bold-italic-underline trio, follow the same toggle logic and round out Word's character-level formatting shortcuts: Ctrl+Shift+= (Cmd+Shift+= on Mac) toggles superscript for exponents or footnote-style markers, and Ctrl+= toggles subscript for chemical formulas or similar notation, both applying to a selection or to subsequent typing exactly like bold and italic do.