One thing I really like about WordPress is its ability to handle keyboard shortcuts in post-writing (assuming you're using the plain text editor, not the WYSIWYG editor) and comment-writing (assuming you have the Comment Quicktags plugin enabled).  The shortcuts can be seen (and edited) in the /wp-includes/js/quicktags.js file.  Here's a list of some common ones: 

Alt+a - Link
Alt+b - Bold
Alt+i - Italics
Alt+u - Unordered list (or in my case, Underline)
Alt+s - Insert (or in my case, Strike)