Selecting text

  • Thread starter Thread starter Matt Wills
  • Start date Start date
M

Matt Wills

The behavior of WXP (and, if I recall correctly, every other version there
has ever been) in selecting text drives me nuts.

If want to select a word or perhaps a few characters in a word, I want just
what I selected, not the whole word and the space after it.

Is there a preference somewhere (I have searched and searched) that changes
this behavior?

Matt
 
Are you referring to during Word Processing?
because that is an option in popular word processor's (IE: in word- Options
| Edit tab | "When selecting, automatically select entire word")
 
The behavior of WXP (and, if I recall correctly, every other version there
has ever been) in selecting text drives me nuts.

If want to select a word or perhaps a few characters in a word, I want just
what I selected, not the whole word and the space after it.

Is there a preference somewhere (I have searched and searched) that changes
this behavior?

Matt
Click to expand...

If having trouble selecting text from a web page, click at the beginning
point. Immediately move down one line with the selection pointer, then move
back up to where you want the selection to end.
 
Are you referring to during Word Processing?
because that is an option in popular word processor's (IE: in word- Options
| Edit tab | "When selecting, automatically select entire word")
Click to expand...

and

If having trouble selecting text from a web page, click at the beginning
point. Immediately move down one line with the selection pointer, then move
back up to where you want the selection to end.
Click to expand...

and in a private message, A and M Stapleton wrote
Set your cursor using the directional arrows, then hold down the Shift Key
and use one of the four arrows to highlight single spaces or single lines.
Left and Right arrows for spaces, Up and Down arrows for the lines.
The Down arrow will highlight the remainder of a line much quicker than
scrolling along with the Right arrow.
Click to expand...

Being a Mac user since Day One (20 years now) I am firmly in the habit of
selecting one or more characters with the cursor, or double-clicking a word
and having that word (no adjacent spaces) selected. This is a universal
behavior in all applications, though some offer a preference to optionally
make the behavior the same as Windows apparently forces (oddly, they call it
"smart selection").

I was hoping there was some text-behavior setting I habd't found that would
change the way WXP always selects the entire word plus the following space.

This is a very minor issue in and of itself, but is also a matter of being
accustomed to having a great deal of control over what's going on. User
control is something that's built in to Apple's developer standards, but the
folks in Redmond apparently don't hand it out willingly. I am not as
anti-Windows as I once was, but it still amazes me that so many people are
willing to put up with it.

Matt
 
MS has guided itself away from user control to some extent because they opt
for user friendly instead. Too much user control leads to too much user
error.
:-)
 
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