tsuwm, I personally think it's less confusing to just click on the words Copy, and Paste, up in the Edit menu; it took a personal visit from Capital Kiwi for me to even know the Ctrl+ functions existed. I had seen the notations up there, but didn't take in that it might mean anything.
Luke, Faldage had a good cautionary note--be sure to hold down the Ctrl button before pressing the c (for copy) or v (for paste).
I will add something, too: when you Copy something, it does not disappear from your screen (as opposed to what happens when you Cut)--a copy goes to be stored on a place in the innards of your computer called, as tsuwm said, the clipboard. But it will only stay on/in the clipboard until you Copy or Cut the next thing. Let's say you have made a long post here, and you want to share part of it with somebody via an e-mail. If you highlight paragraph one and hit Copy, and then highlight paragraph three and hit Copy, and only then go to your letter and hit Paste, only paragraph three will get there: you needed to go to your letter and hit Paste as soon as you Copied para. one, then go back and picked up para. three.
Also--you, or anyone, can practice here all you want (though you can also practice in an e-mail to yourself, etc.): just pretend you're making a post (that is, hit the Reply button), then Preview anything you've experimented with. Nothing will get posted unless you click on the Submit button. Just either hit the Back arrow, close the window, or whatever.
