What is Man?

I just discovered, by total accident, a super neat trick for a long-time annoyance. When I’m writing in Microsoft Word and the red squiggly line for a misspelled word pops up, I usually just backspace and correct the typo. But sometimes I don’t know what the correct spelling is. This means taking my hand off the keyboard and right-clicking with my mouse to get the pop-up context menu with the correct spelling. Now, that may sound like a really picky annoyance, but it breaks the flow of typing. Here’s the solution:

Most (Wintel PC) keyboards have a context menu button next to or close to the space bar. It will have a graphic on it that looks like this one. It’s called the menu button, context button, or application button, depending on who you ask. Essentially, it’s a right click. When I make a typo, I just hit backspace or left arrow and then the context key. The pop-up context menu will appear with the spelling options up top. The down arrow key selects the one you want, the enter key selects. If you don’t get the right suggestions, the escape key cancels the pop-up. It takes using it a few times to get used to the action and make it a habit, but it’s well worth it once you start using it a bunch.