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Comment by jpatokal | Hacker News Reader

Pro tip: Ctrl-Shift-V pastes with formatting stripped in many systems.

Also, on most Google apps including Docs and Gmail, Ctrl-\ (backslash) will reset the formatting of selected text.

And Firefox recently fixed it so this shortcut works! (Previously it was hijacked to show some toolbar or something—don't recall exactly what as I always just groaned and closed it, then opened notepad...)

To paste without leading white space you can paste into Chrome's address bar and recopy the from it. It stops out any formatting and surrounding white space.

And on macOS, the standard way to do this is "Edit > Paste and Match Style".

Windows has the same menu options, theirs is just called "Paste without formatting"

On mac the shortcut is Command-Option-Shift-V

This almost makes me wonder if paste with formatting should be the longer shortcut and that unformatted paste is the default.

I think so. It's very rare that I need to paste with formatting. The majority of time that I actually use normal paste is when the source content is either of the same format or has no format already.

This way is better for discoverability, though, and for showing off when the feature was first introduced.

Word at least lets you choose the default action and offers a little contextual toolbar on paste to change the behavior for that pasted snippet as well. The options are iirc: Paste with original formatting, paste with formatting adjusted to document styles, and paste without formatting.

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