The Windows “Paste as Plain Text” Shortcut
CTRL+SHIFT+V is the shortcut for Paste as Plain Text.
While the standard CTRL+V copies text along with all its original formatting (like bold, italics, links, and font sizes), holding SHIFT strips all that away. It inserts only the raw text, matching the formatting of the document or email you are currently working on.
No More Formatting Mess
If you copy a headline from a website and paste it into an email, it won’t arrive as giant, blue, underlined text. It will look exactly like the rest of your message.
It prevents those “ghost spaces” or weird font changes that happen when you mix text from different sources.
This works across Chrome, Edge, Word, Outlook, and many other third-party applications.
One small quirk
Just like the “right-to-left” copy quirk we discussed earlier, Windows isn’t always consistent. In some older programs, this shortcut might not work, or it might require a different combination like CTRL+ALT+V. However, for almost everything you use daily, CTRL+SHIFT+V is your best friend if you’re looking to keep things from getting messy.
Next time you want to paste something from a formatted document or website into and email sans formatting, instead of using CTRL+V, use CTRL+SHIFT+V.