Whether you're writing an email or a document on your Mac or Windows PC, you'll often need to correct typos or move words or whole sentences around or add an underline, bold or italic for emphasis.

We’ll show you how to do the essentials below, using Word for Mac and Windows.

If you’ve misspelt a word, you’ll see it underlined in red.

All you need to do is simply right click on the word to bring up a list of alternatives and click on the one you meant to type.

If you right click on a word that is correctly spelt, you’ll see the standard right click menu pop up, from here you can easily cut, copy or paste text. You can also access the font options to bold or underline the text or look up the meaning of the word as well as words that mean the same.

When you’re editing your text, you can work faster by using keyboard shortcuts instead of right clicking on the text you want to edit.

For example, you can cut, copy and paste text by holding down the following keys with your text highlighted:

Cut - ctrl (Windows) or cmd (Mac) and x
Copy - ctrl (Windows) or cmd (Mac) and c
Paste - ctrl (Windows) or cmd (Mac) and v
Undo - ctrl (Windows) or cmd (Mac) and z (this can be a lifesaver if you've made any mistakes in your editing!)

You can also format text by highlighting it and then using the following keys:

Underline - ctrl (Windows) or cmd (Mac) and u
Bold - ctrl (Windows) or cmd (Mac) and b
Italics - ctrl (Windows) or cmd (Mac) and i