just found some useful key commands for inkscape I gonna crib from this tutorial.

move selected characters inside a text

• Alt + ► or  Alt + ◄ (horizontal)
• Alt + ▲ or Alt + ▼ (vertical)

rotate selected characters inside a text

• Alt + [ or Alt + ] (us key layout)
• Alt + ü or Alt + + (de key layout)
• unfortunately, my version of inkscape (0.46) did not rotate the characters at all…
  the mentioned tutortial is written for “Inkscape 0.46+devel, built Apr 9 2008″