Kill Yank Ok, you might have known about the screenshot shortcuts and the dictionary shortcut and are currently patting yourself on the back for being such an OS X whiz-kid. But did you know that you have access to an alternate clipboard? As far as we can tell, these super secret shortcuts are a carry-over from Linux. Wherever they’re from, they are extremely handy!
Kill: Ctrl-K
Yank: Ctrl-Y
With text selected, Ctrl-K works as a secondary “cut” command by removing the highlighted text without replacing what is currently residing in your clipboard (cool!).
To bring the text back, hit Ctrl-Y. “Kill” has a special use beyond that of the “cut” command. If you place your cursor at a given point in a paragraph and hit Ctrl-K, all of the text from that point forward will be cut. This is a great way to quickly grab and move an entire paragraph of text. Ctrl-K only seems to work on editable text (like in TextEdit and Mail). For instance, you can’t “kill” text on a web page.
