When people see that I highlight text while I'm reading, they always want to know what practical reason it serves. The simplest answer is that it kind of helps me track the text, but it's less than that. It also isn't quite just a nervous habit. The only description that makes sense to me is that it feels like a physical connection to the page. More like spinning a pen, or rolling an object in your hand while you think about it. Like the mouse is my fingers and I'm just sort of fiddling with the page, like flicking through page edges of a book just for the feel of it.
Poll: Do you select text while reading?
51–60 of 366 posts
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#52Yes, it is a motor tic & possibly a bad habit.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#53For a long time the New York Times had a javascript thing that would pop up a dictionary reference for anything you double clicked on. As someone who compulsively doubleclicks to highlight and unhighlight, it bugged the hell out of me.
I used Glimmerblocker to nuke all Javascript from the Times because of this. What is it about newspaper websites that encourages what I can only assume are normally rational developers to misbehave so unbelievably badly?
These terrible, tacky tack-ons have little to no relationship to what the developers would do... unless those same developers are also in charge of partner programs.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#54I am a selector, partly by habit/something to do, and partly to track position, especially in wider formats. Newspapers are in columns for a reason! On one site I frequent, it took me a minute to figure out why I kept going to random other websites. I was keeping the mouse out of the way on the (rather large) margins, and apparently the full screen border ad was clickable anywhere that wasn't the center content column or navigation. Just blank space down the page, but I'd click it to select rows of text, and get carted off to the ad website. I suppose that's one way to monetize a strange habit...
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#55I "select all" on pages that use bright on dark text, e.g. yegg's and jwz's blogs. Otherwise they are virtually impossible to read for longer than a minute.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#56I just spastically double-click words all over the page while I'm reading. No real rhyme or reason to it, it doesn't help me read or anything. It's mostly just an unconscious tick.
I do this constantly. I believe it's likely due to my ADHD.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#57The only time I do it is when the the columns are very wide in paragraph text and flowing from one line to the next is difficult. Sometimes increasing font size so less words fit in a column accomplish the same thing, though.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#58Excellent question! I've been wondering this for the past two years...made an annotator based off of this idea.
I found that most people select because they are holding the mouse - they have to use it if they are holding it. Then sometimes you select to preserve your position while scrolling.
This also led me to believe that people digest information in chunks. Highlighted text serves as a "todo" - must finish reading the highlighted block of text before diverting focus to something else.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#59I used to years ago, but eventually wrote a browser extension Paragrasp to do it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/paragrasp/lhhabjbh... for Chrome and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/paragrasp/ for Firefox.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#60I find myself semi randomly selecting things on pages when I'm reading through something quickly or skimming through a page. If something catches my eye, I'll select it as or before I read it.