Sorry, I did not explain that very well. I am highlighting what I want to copy with the mouse, and then when I try to right click to bring up the cut/copy/paste menu I get a different menu with alternate spellings of the word instead of the option to copy and paste.
As I said it is usually with weird spellings of names that this happens. Try it with your mouse on an alternate spelling or foreign name, it's really weird. I end up having to scroll up and down and respell it and they are usually so hard and really long that copy/paste is so much easier.
(Thanks for telling me how to do it without the mouse. I don't know many shortcuts with the keyboard only, but try to learn 1 or 2 new ones each time I come across them. )