Edit Menu

Cut: removes selected text and places it on the pasteboard. Note that selected text can be several non-contiguous selections. Also note that you may Alt+drag to create a rectangular text selection.

Copy: copies selected text to the pasteboard.

Paste: pastes text from the pasteboard, inserting it at the blinking text cursor (for non-read only documents).

Paste & Match Style: pastes plain text (that is, text without formatting) from the pasteboard, inserting it at the blinking text cursor. The pasted text adopts the font and paragraph style of the text just preceding it.

Delete: removes selected text.

Select All: expands the text selection to include the whole document.

Invert Selection: Everything selected becomes not selected and vice versa.

Insert

Page/Column Break: pushes subsequent text to the next page (or the next column, in multiple column layouts) in Layout view.

Paragraph Break: pushes subsequent text to a new paragraph

Line Break: causes a new line without a new paragraph (sometimes called a 'soft return').

Non-breaking space: inserting a non-breaking space between words will keep the words together when they might otherwise be split across two lines.

Date (Long Format)

Date (Short Format)

Time

Date/Time

Picture: adds an image to the document at the text cursor. A copy of the image is contained inside the document, so there is no reference to the original, external image file. A user can also drag and drop an image file directly into a document. If necessary, use the Inspector's 'Force Line Height / At Most' setting to reduce extra line spacing around an image contained in a paragraph of text. Also, sandwiching an image between two return characters will force single-spacing.

Note: applies a contrasting font and/or color scheme to text typed immediately afterward. Can be used like a teacher's red pen, to indicate notations or needed corrections. See Bean Preferences > Advanced > Notes Mode to set the font or select options.

Signature Line: Inserts a signature line at the insertion point.

Change

Text to Smart Quotes: Changes straight quotes to Smart Quotes (curvy quotes), which are aesthetically pleasing and typographically correct.

Text to Straight Quotes: Changes Smart Quotes to straight quotes when they are necessary (for example, in source code).

Picture Size: if the text selection contains an image, a slider control is revealed for resizing the image. You can also double-click an image to reveal the resizing control.

Remove

All/Selected List Markers: removes list markers and attributes from the text selection, or the whole document if there is no selection. Useful because sometimes a list marker can be deleted, but the ‘list’ attribute remains, which can cause unpredictable results (list markers appearing out of the blue later on).

All/Selected Text Tables: removes text tables from the text selection, or the whole document if there is no selection. Useful because text pasted from web pages that contain text tables can cause unpredictable results in Layout mode (inappropriate pagination and display problems, Apple bug rdar://5650712). The presence of these problem-causing text tables is not always obvious because such tables often do not display grid lines and are there merely to position text.

All/Selected Attachments: removes attachments (images, etc.) from the text selection, or the whole document if there is no selection.

Spelling…

Show Spelling and Grammar: activate the grammar checker by selecting the 'Check grammar' checkbox in the Spelling and Grammar panel (OS X 10.5+ only).

Speech…

Special Characters: reveals a palate for inputing special characters into a document (accented letters, etc.).