I do it all the time. Also, when using Safari, I often pinch in and out while reading. The rendering gets blurry until I lift the fingers, and the moment the text is crisp again, I feel certain satisfaction.
Poll: Do you select text while reading?
111–120 of 366 posts
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#112I do this cause I just like to interact with the graphics. Especially if it's a Mac and you have all those nice quartz effects like when you highlight, then click and drag so that the text is floating above some other part of the screen, disembodied from the article.
I pause to think a lot when I read, so this is just sort of fidgeting while my mind thinks about something, I suppose.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#113I thought I was the only one who did this. Interestingly, I do it much less when using the Clearly Chrome plugin from Evernote. https://evernote.com/clearly/
Good observation. Same, though I've always used Readability instead of Clearly.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#114I just do it as habit. It's hard to pick the category from those above. It's probably a combination of "to track my reading position" and "to increase text contrast" but I don't consciously set out to do either of those. It's really just a harmless habit.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#115Over 30% of people select text while reading. Markerly.com gives publishers a dashboard of text selection and copy and paste trends. We are about to roll out heat maps that show text selection - it definitely tells a story and differs article to article.
Source: I'm CEO of Markerly and I look at this data everyday.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#116I 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 bought a "silent" mouse just so I could do this at work, and borrowed the noisy one for home.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#117For 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.
The New York Times site was why I installed NoScript for the first time.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#118Yes, but I'm ashamed to admit it to my friends.
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#119When 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 thi…
+1 here. It's just fiddling around. And it makes me really upset when I highlight some text and it's really low contrast (like on these HN discussion threads).
Re: Poll: Do you select text while reading?
#120Yes, completely. Usually to track what I am reading or to change the colour, but sometimes for the same reason I draw random boxes with the selection tool on my desktop.. because I fidget.