I apologize in advance for asking such a beginners question, and I assume this will come down to my view/window being wrong.
I used Blender a few years back, and I am familiar with how shapes work and the interface it had years ago. Now back then, if I wanted to select vertices/edges/faces, I would click the appropriate icon next to the Object/Edit dropdown box, but as you can see, it is no longer there.
According to the official documentation, pressing Ctrl+Tab should produce the same effect, but it as well does not seem to change anything. I am able to select and move vertices, as this is the default behaviour but I cannot seem to be able to change to edge or face select.
I am using Blender v2.78c, and it looks quite different from when I downloaded it a few months ago, when those buttons were still where I was used to seeing them.