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Poll: Do you select text while reading?

411 points by cpeterso ↗ HN
I am surprised at how many people, like me, who select text to highlight what they are reading. Some reasons include tracking your reading position, increasing text contrast, or as an "intra-page" bookmark. If these are common actions, perhaps browsers (or add-ons) can provide purpose-built features for these functions.

365 comments

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msrpotus
To be honest, never really thought about why I select the text before.
aaronpk
Sometimes I select text for my own internal emphasis. If I see something important I select it as a way to reinforce its importance to myself.
xyzzyb
Interesting! I've never heard of this or even seen anyone do it.
kzahel
I've watched people who do this (highlighting text and moving the cursor around while reading) and it bugs the heck out of me.

I wonder if there's some kind of app to be made for these people, so that text moves around or changes color when their eyes track toward the text. (This would be horrible, to my taste, but you never know)

commandar
>I wonder if there's some kind of app to be made for these people, so that text moves around or changes color when their eyes track toward the text.

I really don't think that would help. For me the highlighting is a lot like tracing along text with your finger as you read on a printed page; it gives my eye a visual cue where I'm trying to track.

The issue is that I can read text faster than my eyes can track without wandering slightly and losing my position in the text, so simply tracking where my eyes are looking wouldn't do anything to mitigate that. It'd just end up highlighting where my tracking gets off anyway.

Kluny
Well, it's a nervous habit, so we'd just have to replace it with a different habit. I would probably bite my nails or scratch at invisible zits, or something equally horrible. So it's nice to have the trackpad to contain your nervous twitching.
davidw
I worked for a guy who would sit there selecting bits of text on and off while showing me some web page. I wanted to grab the mouse, wrench it from his computer and stomp on it. If it's the kind of thing that floats your boat, fine, to each his own, but don't make other people watch.
afaqurk
I've always considered myself a slow reader. I feel that highlighting words/sentences on a web page helps me read quicker (for whatever reason).
eric-hu
Didn't answer, I'd like to choose "Yes, all of the above"
evan_
You can vote for multiple options.
tgb
Is there a way to see the number of unique voters for the combined "yes" options? Otherwise this poll isn't particularly useful.
evan_
If there were a way would that make this poll be useful?
cpeterso
Since this poll will have a heavy selection (ha-ha ;) bias towards people who do select text, I figured the reasons why people select is more interesting data.
fendrak
I select text compulsively while reading. I just double-click whatever paragraph I'm on to make it stand out from the rest of the text, and then just kind of keep clicking. Why? I have no idea, really. Just an odd habit!
patmcguire
For 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.
TheCapn
An IDE that I use at my job does this trying to pull up variable declarations for whatever you've selected (even if its giant blocks of data). I know that feeling.
jfb
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?
sk5t
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.
OriginalSyn
Exactly, I can't count the times I've butted heads with our marketing, design and business development teams over silly, annoying and outright ridiculous features they had charged us with implementing... before we became a more agile shop these confrontations usually resulted in me having to back down and implement the features because they were pretty much set in stone by the time they got into our queue but now we can often compromise since we're involved earlier in the planning stages.
davimack
I wouldn't attribute the change to "agile" ... but would attribute the problem to poor design. Subtle difference, but you get the same garbage in agile stuff - just depends on the PM, really.
OriginalSyn
No, I don't attribute it to being agile, I attribute it to dev being involved near the start of project planning and having input along the way. It just happened that when the company decided on being an agile shop this happened as well. Sorry that was not clear.
kamjam
The annoying thing is that these things are often used to stop other developers stealing stuff, like the the disable right click so you can't steal my images.

Someone I know has an old website in flash that he had done that way so people steal the images. When I did a print screen and a 5 second edit in Photoshop he was a little shocked. He's get the site rebuilt in HTML now :)

If it's on the web, then it's gonna get stolen if someone actually wants it. Don't piss everyone else off in the meanwhile.

scanr
The New York Times site was why I installed NoScript for the first time.
andrewla
Yes, the New York Times was the worst. In a similar vein, snopes.com also forbids selecting on the page. And when they "fixed" Chrome so that clicking and dragging from within a selection dragged the selection instead of starting a new selection, I died a little inside. Why would I want to drag text on a web page? I guess random clicking and selecting is no more of a useful use case, but I still find myself messing this up.
Flenser
Why would I want to drag text on a web page

I drag selected text to between tabs to create a new tab with a Google search for that text. I do that a lot.

tadfisher
Do you know about the "Search Google for '%query%'" in the right-click menu?
kennae
Thanks for pointing that out (not sarcasm).
Flenser
Did not (also not sarcasm), thanks.
rocky1138
Thank you for sharing this. I didn't know it was an option.
SquareWheel
I also do that. Once in a while you get text with a colon in it, which Chrome interprets as a protocol handler and goes to about:blank. 1 in a thousand but it still gets me often. Here is a test.

drag: thistext

And yes, I've reported this bug.

Inufu
works fine for me in Chrome 23.0.1271.64 on Ubuntu 12.10
SquareWheel
I believe it's Windows only, but I'm not currently dualbooting to verify.
devcpp
Any idea if this exists for Firefox? I've been looking for it for a while. It's the major feature I miss from Chrome. I've had enough of Ctrl-C, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-V.
kibwen
Highlight any text and right-click. The third option down will offer to search Google using the selected text (though it probably uses your default search engine, rather than hardcoding Google).

You can also highlight any URL (it doesn't need to be a link, just look like a URL) and tell Firefox to load it by either right-clicking or by dragging it to the tab bar. Try it out on any of the following:

  google.com
  www.google.com
  http://www.google.com
eavc
I do that sometimes. That way I can copy something to the clipboard and then drag something else either to a new tab or to another application.
superkinz
Totally agree, super annoying. I will highlight and re-highlight a paragraph over and over as I read through it. I'm not sure why I do it, maybe it's my impulse to go faster that I can satisfy by moving my cursor rather than reading more rapidly.
nsoldiac
Quora does a similar thing, it's beyond annoying for a fellow compulsive text-selector.
monk_e_boy
I'm a programmer and in one of my first jobs the sales guy (who was a nice bloke) double clicked on everything all the time.

This made me think about how he demo'd our windows app, I had to also test double, tripple clicks, double click + drag etc. So I added a feature that on the 'About this product' page added the clicks and double clicks. When it reached over 100 I displayed an animated bunch of flowers.

Many months later I get a phone call from the sales guy, "Hey, monk.e.boy, I'm rehursing a demo and some flowers are showing." I was like, Jeeeesus, 100 double clicks on the most obscure page of our app?! WTF are you doing!

mason55
I 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.
cstrat
I do this too sometimes. Sometimes I accidentally click a link and that is when I notice... otherwise it is mostly unconscious.
Scorponok
This gets annoying with sites that have actions defined when you click on words, or bring up a popup window when you click, etc. :(
iNate2000
I also hate when clicking in "empty" space takes me to an advertiser's site.
bjhoops1
Oh my god, yes! I am a compulsive margin-clicker. I ostensibly do this to make sure that the browser page has focus, but really it's really just a tick. I love TheOnion.com, but they kill me with their ads-in-the-margins.

What I typically do is fire up Chrome developer tools, and DESTROY the offending node. I find this therapeutic. :)

svdad
I thought it was just me. Really bugs my wife when she's trying to read something over my shoulder.
wiredfool
I do it too. Some sites (nytimes) trigger actions on the select that drive me crazy. In retrospect, that's probably when I noticed that I was doing it.
darrenkopp
I do this constantly. I believe it's likely due to my ADHD.
keb0b0
YES thank you, I am diagnosed with ADHD and I have this quirky behavior and many more. If you guys are selecting text over and over, it is very likely (but not always the case--I'm no psychiatrist!) that you have ADHD and should consider getting screened/diagnosed if you haven't done so already. It's nice to know as it is a part of your identity (at least for me it is) and you'll learn to live with the symptoms. I actually enjoy having ADHD and selecting text compulsively :) Consider reading "Delivered from Distraction" by Hallowell.

Cheers, keb0b0

MrUnderhill
I too do this, and sometimes compulsively drag large portions of highlighted text around as well. Annoyingly, Opera seems to open in new tabs any links in the highlighted area when the dragged text is released. This has led to me up/down voting everything at various sites on more than a few occasions (but ah, they shouldn't have GETs do anything anyway, I say :)).
monk_e_boy
Sometimes when you highlight and drag some text, it stays at 100% size so you can fit it exactly into where you dragged it from. If you select too much the OS resizes it to something like 80%. I often get lost trying to get as much as I can at 100%.

Drives my boss crazy.

cwh
As well as double-clicking words to highlight sentences/paragraphs, I repeatedly right-click on any webpage / desktop I am on. A while back I took some time to figure out why I do it and realize that it's an easy go-to for checking performance of your computer (ie system latency). The coolest part about this is that these days all menu items, during peak performance, fade in over 50ms or so and when it beings to slow down its immediately noticeable.

I come from a background of a lot of CLI, especially to remote systems over ssh, and the latency from when i type a character to when it shows up is a really good predictor for the system's IO if its being overloaded.

I guess this is also handy when doing remote desktop or in a VM -- but I never do that.

greenmountin
I bought a "silent" mouse just so I could do this at work, and borrowed the noisy one for home.
markfig
I do the same. But I've figured out it's a leftover habit from the olden days when macs used to crash all the time. I kept my mouse moving to know there was still LIFE beneath that screen. Pointer used to freeze when the system did. God, I'm old.
instakill
Me too. All sorts of weird "OCD" things like that.
endlessvoid94
I don't do it when I'm using a trackpad, but I do when I'm using a mouse.

Interesting.

nhebb
I don't, but I've always wished there were a way to bookmark position within a page.
millerm
Yes I do, and I really notice it when using O'Reilly's Safari bookshelf. Whenever you select text it pops up a window asking if you want to highlight or make a note, so irritating! If that mouse is in my hand I always select text that I am reading. I am not sure why. Perhaps it's just a reflex so I can keep track of where I am in the text. With so much noise on web pages, it must help. I'll have to test if I do this as often on other things. I know I have accidentally cut and pasted previous commands in a terminal and have been very upset with the consequences. I'm just sloppy with that mouse and middle button I guess. But those darn new line characters on a paste can be catastrophic.
me2i81
I do it as a nervous habit.
fusiongyro
I usually don't need to unless the design makes it hard for me to keep my place.
fwr
Only if the text is multiple paragraphs, otherwise it's too much of a hassle.
jandy
I don't, and it bugs the hell out of me when I'm sat reading with someone else who does. Nothing more distracting than them going nuts with the mouse while I'm trying to read.

I get why people do it, but sheesh, take your hands off the mouse for a minute, it won't kill you!

sareon
I have on occasion, just when the text is one giant wall, I start having a hard time finding the next line without re-reading the line I just read. If I highlight the previous line I know not to read it.
woj
No, but I do scroll the page up, so that the line I'm reading aligns with the top of the browser viewing area.

Some sites nowadays add a floating header to the top of the page that changes size as you scroll down which is super distracting when reading the way I do.

stephengillie
When using a Chrome browser with adblock and flashblock and HTTPS, and JS disabled, sometimes text isn't where it was designed to be. Sometimes text covers images or runs into other text, and selecting is necessary to be able to read it.
hnriot
if you cripple the browser, what do you expect? If you disable JS you might as well just not bother with the web.
stephengillie
I understand the way in which I'm hindering the tool I use. I am doing so intentionally.

And I understand that having text cover images in this situation can be described as "by design".

But it's still a case in which I select text.

graue
I do it sometimes compulsively, but I think it started for a legitimate reason: clicking to make sure the text has focus. That way when I use up/down/PageUp/PageDown to scroll, the text actually scrolls. If there is a textbox that has focus, up or down jumps to that textbox instead which drives me bonkers.

Also, recent versions of Firefox have a bug where after you bookmark a page, if you've added a tag, the page loses focus and has to be clicked to re-focus (otherwise keyboard scrolling is broken). So far this has never bothered me quite enough to check if the bug was reported.

Edit: Since I cared enough to write about it here, I filed a bug report: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815812

blktiger
If you were on a MAC you would only have to make sure the mouse cursor is over the area you wanted to scroll. :P
graue
I am actually using a MacBook Air, but I prefer keyboard to two-finger scrolling most of the time.
z92
Air arrow keys are half the size of regular keys, which makes scrolling through keyboard even more painful for me. The button is like a single button, and you have to hit its top half or bottom half to scroll.

I had been using two finger scrolling since Lion. But most PC user that tries to scroll a page on my laptop, finds it very difficult.

gideon_b
When I read the title of this post I thought "WHOA, other people do that too?!" and clicked through to take the poll. Your poll is going to have a heavy selection bias towards people who select text while reading. People who don't select text while reading will probably ignore this poll and go read an article on erlang best practices or Paul Graham's favorite color.
cpeterso
I had originally posted a poll with Often/Sometimes/Never answers, but I realized, like you point out, that this poll would have heavy selection bias. So I changed the poll to gather reasons why people select. That's probably more interesting data than Yes/No anyways. :)
sltkr
The ratio of people that does this is something that you could accurately measure if you have a somewhat popular website. (The reason why not so much, of course. I doubt many people have a conscious reason for this behaviour anyway. I don't.)
chollida1
I do this.

I just attributed this to ADD. But I do like the contrast.

darrenkopp
I attribute it to my ADD as well, and I have no real reason why I do it. I'm never actually selecting much either, and just random select things around the page as I'm reading, not even what I'm reading.