Selecting whole word using keyboard only

There is a better way. AutoHotkey.

http://www.autohotkey.com/

Or if you are in Visual Studios, Ctrl W selects the whole word.

On macOS, create a file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict with the following content:

{
    "^w" = (selectWord:);
}

If the file already exists, add the second line above within its top-level braces.

Restart (quit and start again) an app to apply new key bindings.

Now you can press ^w (Control-W) in any native application (i.e. not Firefox, Eclipse, etc.) to have it select the current word.

You can customize the shortcut, ^ is Control, ~ Option, $ Shift, @ Command.

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Some applications include menu items for this action. TextMate, for example, uses the ^w shortcut for Edit » Select » Word by default.

In MSWord, press F8 once to enter the extended mode, twice to select the whole word, three times to select the whole sentence, four times to select paragraph and five times the entire document. Press ESC to exit the extended mode