The following table provides the key bindings for editable text entry areas in GTK-2. However, be advised that these bindings are programmable, and may be augmented or changed by installation of a local theme.
| GTK Text-Entry Key Bindings | |
| Ctrl-a | Select all text |
|---|---|
| Ctrl-c | Copy selected text to clipboard |
| Ctrl-v | Paste clipboard at cursor |
| Ctrl-x | Cut selection to clipboard |
| Home | Move cursor to beginning of line |
| End | Move cursor to end of line |
| Left | Move cursor left one character |
| Ctrl-Left | Move cursor left one word |
| Right | Move cursor right one character |
| Ctrl-Right | Move cursor right one word |
| Backspace | Delete previous character |
| Ctrl-Backspace | Delete previous word |
| Clear | Delete current line |
| Shift-Insert | Paste clipboard at cursor |
| Ctrl-Insert | Copy selected text to clipboard |
| Delete | Delete next character |
| Shift-Delete | Cut selected text to clipboard |
| Ctrl-Delete | Delete next word |
Clicking with button 1 will move the cursor to that location. Double clicking will select the clicked-on word. Triple clicking will select the entire line. Button 1 is also used to select text by dragging the pointer over the text to select.
Clicking with button 2 will paste the primary selection into the line at the click location, if the window text is editable.
Clicking with button 3 will will bring up a context menu. From the menu, the user can select editing operations.
These operations are basically the same in Windows and Unix/Linux, with one important difference: in Windows, the primary selection applies only to the program containing the selection. In Unix/Linux, the primary selection applies to the entire desktop, like the clipboard.
Special characters can be entered using the Unicode escape Ctrl-u. The sequence starts by pressing Ctrl-u, then entering
hex digits representing the character code, and is terminated with a
space character or Enter. The Unicode coding can be obtained
from tables provided on the internet, or from applications such as
KCharSelect which is part of the KDE desktop. These are generally
expressed as ``U + xxxx'' where the xxxx is a hex number.
It is the hex number that should be entered following Ctrl-u.
For example, the code for 
(pi) is 03c0. Note that
special characters can also be selected and copied, or in some cases
dragged and dropped, from another window.