Highlight

Highlight can refer to any of the following:

1. A highlight is a visual indication that text or another object is selected with the mouse or keyboard. When text, files, folders, cells, or other objects are highlighted, they'll be a different color, have a bold border, or other types of formatting that differentiate it from other objects. For example, when highlighting text, the selected text colors reverse, show as blue, have dots around the selection, or have bold lines around the selected text.

Highlighting text allows a user to move, copy, or cut that selected text. Highlighting an object, such as an icon, also allows it to be cut, copied, deleted, moved, viewed, opened, or otherwise manipulated.

Above is an example of highlighted text in a text editor.

Is there a shortcut key to highlight?

There's no single keyboard shortcut to highlight text. However, there are several tricks you can you use to highlight text and other objects.

• Click and while continuing to hold the mouse button down drag in the direction you want to highlight. Dragging down highlights a line at a time.
• Double-click text to highlight a word.
• Triple-click text to highlight a paragraph.
• Press Ctrl+A to select all text. To only select text in the textarea box below, click in the box before pressing the shortcut.
• Click in the box to get the text cursor at a position you want to start highlighting text. Hold down Shift and while holding it down press the arrow key in the direction you want to highlight.
• Holding down Ctrl and Shift while using the left or right arrow key highlights one word at a time instead of one character.

This textarea box can be used to practice using the above tips to highlighting words, paragraphs and other text. This is a second paragraph for demonstrative purposes. It can be used to see what tips highlight one paragraph, two paragraphs, or all text.

What happens if you press a key when text is highlighted?

If text is highlighted in a text editor or a form field and you press a key, that text will be overwritten by the key you pressed. For example, if text was highlighted and you pressed "a," that highlighted text would be replaced by the letter "a." If you pressed the Enter, the text would be replaced with a new line or paragraph depending on the program.

How to unhighlight

To unhighlight or remove highlighted text or another object, move your mouse pointer to somewhere that's not highlighted and click once.

What is the text highlight color?

The text highlight color can vary depending on the program used when text is highlighted. For example, in Microsoft Word, many text editors, and on most browsers, the text is highlighted in a blue box. Other programs may highlight text in a black box.

2. With Microsoft Word and other text programs, text can be highlighted in a different color for quick reference. For example, "This text is highlighted in yellow" and is easily seen while skimming this page. Highlighting is done by changing the text's background color and sometimes changing the foreground color to make the text easier to read.

3. With HTML (HyperText Markup Language), text can be highlighted using the <span> tag and formatted with a style, using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), or using the HTML5 <mark> tag.

Cursor, Drag, Mark, Marquee, Reverse video, Select, Shift clicking, Software terms