A recent survey of university students in Japan appears to make it clear that an awareness of basic keyboard shortcuts is lacking. Keyboard shortcuts for copying (CTRL+C) and pasting (CTRL+V) data are decades old and work across every modern desktop OS that we know of. However, around 40% of the well-educated sample of young adults surveyed were unaware of them. The survey was conducted by digital skills and training outfit Menter, part of White Inc. Japan.
Before going further we don’t have experience of the quality of Menter’s prior surveys and note that the questionnaire was completed by only a modest number of students. Of the 519 university students, based all around Japan, the survey says that nearly all of them own a laptop or desktop, with just 5.8% saying they owned neither. Perhaps for this small portion of users, a smartphone or tablet has been sufficient to address their digital life.
In the chart above it is easy to see the most popular shortcut key combos, and the level of awareness of them by the students surveyed. Leading the pack as far as awareness goes, you can see 62.6% of folk knew that you could copy data using CTRL+C. Surprisingly the same number didn’t know how to paste the captured data, but CTRL+V aware students weren’t a lot fewer at 59.2%.
There is a big drop in awareness of the next most well-known keyboard shortcut: using CTRL+Z for undoing the most recent action. Only about 30% of surveyed university students knew about this very useful shortcut. Awareness of other experienced computer operator staples like CTRL+X, CTRL+S, CTRL+A, and CTRL+P were all around this level.
At the bottom of the awareness chart at 19.8% isn’t any particular keyboard shortcut combo. This is the percentage of students who didn’t know any shortcut keys at all, according to the survey.
Menter’s survey wasn’t all about keyboard shortcuts. As it is involved in digital skills and training it also looked at the students’ self-professed abilities concerning video conferencing, office suite software experience, and familiarity with using a computer mouse.
Takashi Yokoyama, the CEO of White Inc. offered some conclusions from Menter’s survey to Japan’s ITMedia. He said that the survey showed that even at university there should be more opportunities “to properly learn how to use a PC.” It shouldn’t be assumed that young people can use PCs, he added, so it may be a valuable area for targeted investment by educational institutions.
Whether you’ve found this story about Control+C and Control+V illuminating, or not, it might be worth a look at our feature on essential Windows 11 shortcut keys. People who spend a lot of time copying and pasting can even buy a dedicated Stack Overflow The Key v2, as pictured (top), which started as an April Fool’s joke. Another option is to program single macro keys or invest in something like the 8BitDo mechanical keyboard with giant programmable super buttons.
Earlier this year we also published a handy feature detailing how to navigate Windows without a mouse or touchpad. Sometimes using a keyboard for shortcuts and system navigation is faster and easier. Other times it can be useful if your mouse or trackpad is broken or glitching.
