I cringe when I hear a pensioner erase text with a ringing barrage of backspaces. I cringe the way you might cringe at the sound of a small child screaming on an airplane while frothing at the mouth, with sharp nails digging into a blackboard.

That's what backspaces sound like. Short of learning to touch type, you need to master five keyboard cowboy skills to look passably competent at typing:

Ctrl+Click or Middle Click Links

This opens hyperlinks in a new browser tab so you can keep your work in the current tab. This will change your life. Seriously. Try it on a link to Life Hacker, which is filled with useful hacks.

Home and End

Trivial as it may seem, few pre-90s computer users seem to know they can skip to the start or end of a line by pressing the Home or End keys, respectively. Try it in your browser's address bar.

Pretty neat, eh? This is useful in and of itself, but more mysterious advances await those who combine these navigational keys with other simple key modifiers...

The Shift Key

Holding Shift while moving the caret will universally select text. Want to select a whole sentence? Press Home or End while holding the Shift key. Boom! You have just selected all the text in your browser bar. Start typing over the selection to erase it immediately - no need for Backspace first! Yes, you just saved the world from a screaming infant.

Tip: You can also click on text while holding Shift to select the text inbetween.

Ctrl+Right and Ctrl+Left

When editing text, this key combination will move your caret (the text cursor) to the next or previous word boundary, respectively. No more tapping the left and right arrow keys to move between words in sentences.

After learning to touch type, this skill improved my text editing speed the most.

Ctrl+Shift+Left & Ctrl+Shift+Right

This is The Mortal Kombat Fatality of Keyboard hacks. It will blow onlookers' minds with its elegance of form and function. By combining Ctrl+Right or Ctrl+Left with the Shift key, you can select whole words and even entire sentences with just a few key presses! Try it in your address bar to silence screeching infants the world over.

Conclusion

It only takes four keys to keep your hands off the mouse and on the keyboard: Ctrl, Shift, Home and End. The next step is remapping Caps Lock to Backspace.

Once you've mastered these skills, I would strongly recommend getting a better keyboard. The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is the greatest piece of hardware I own and will seriously improve your typing.