There are lots of shortcuts in Word. You are probably familiar with a few of these, but I doubt if you know them all. Note that many of these tricks actually work in one way or another in other Office programs (I'll explore some of those in a future blog posting).  Do you know any I have missed? Post them in the comments so everyone can see them!

In/On Your Text

• Single clicking your mouse places your cursor at a specific insertion point.
• Double clicking your mouse will select a word.
• Triple clicking your mouse will select a paragraph.

With Cursor in the Left Hand White Margin (changes to right pointing arrow)

• Single clicking will select the line of text (not sentence, line). Click and drag to select multiple lines of text.
• Double clicking will select the paragraph of text.
• Triple clicking will select an entire document (or else press Ctrl-A for All).

Using Shift/Ctrl When Selecting Text

Click once at the beginning of what you want to select. Scroll to the end, where you want to end your highlighting, but don't click yet. Hold down the Shift key and then click at the end of what you want to select. All text between those two clicking points will be selected. This is especially useful when you want to select across multiple pages, since as we all know, when you click and drag past one page, the cursor starts selecting at Mach 1 and you whiz past where you want to go, then when you try to go backwards, you whiz past where you want to backtrack... 

Want to modify your selection (like you included a few letters too many or two few)? Let go of the left mouse button. Press down the shift key, use the arrow keys to extend or reduce the selection. Please note that this works at the end of the selection of the direction you were going. In other words, if you selected left to right, holding down shift and using the arrow keys will extend or reduce the right end of the selection. If you selected right to left, holding down shift and using the arrow keys will extend or reduce the left end of the selection.

Pressing Shift-End will select all text to the right of the cursor to the end of the line.

Pressing Shift-Ctrl-End will select all text from the current location to the end of the document.

Pressing Ctrl and clicking your mouse will select an entire sentence (but only if you don't already have text highlighted for selection).

If you have selected text and you want to select additional text that is not next to the first text area, let go of the left mouse button after selecting the first set of text. Then press down the Ctrl button and click and drag the second set of text. If you want more text, let go of the left mouse button, keep holding down the Ctrl button, and then click and drag again (and so on). NOTE: If you accidentally let go of the Ctrl button and start to click and drag again, you will lose all prior selections and start from scratch.

Ctrl-left/right arrow will move your mouse by word. If you are selecting text and using the shift shortcut just mentioned, holding down the shift key and pressing Ctrl-left/right arrow will extend your selection by a word at a time in the appropriate direction.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Word has an extended mode. If you look down at the very bottom you will see a status bar that includes the letters EXT, greyed out. If you doubleclick that, it will turn black, which turns extended mode on. This makes your arrow keys act like you are holding down your mouse and clicking and dragging. It also allows you, for instance, to just press period and the computer will select all text to the next period. I find this mode a little cumbersome, but there are times when it is useful. Doubleclick the EXT to turn it off again or press ESC. (Bet you didn't realize all those little abbreviations that are greyed out actually do something, did you??? Ohhhh yessss).
 
And this is one of my personal favorites and one that never fails to get at least a couple "dang it, I didn't know I could do that - I've wasted hours deleting stuff manually in that situation" comments... To delete a tabbed column of text (or whatever) in the middle of your page, hold down the Alt key while you select with your mouse, starting at the top left of your selection.

There are even more ways to move through and select text in Word, but this should give you a pretty good start. :)