Selection
Experimentation
One way to find out how software works is to experiment. It turns out there are number of ways to select text. You are going to find out by trial and error what happens when you use a variety of techniques.
Before you do the following exercise turn off the automatic selection of whole words.
Tools > Options > Edit > turn off the 3rd item
If you ever find that you find the automatic selection of whole words annoying you can turn it off in MSWord. You can then select whole words by using one of the options below.
In a word processor a paragraph is ended whenever you press the enter key. Blank lines and titles are in fact paragraphs inside a word processor.
With the insertion icon
Describe the selection made when you do each of the following with the insertion cursor showing. The insertion cursor looks like the letter “I”.
Test this by clicking in the middle of the blue word a few lines above. Possible answers to the questions are list at the bottom of the page.
Double Click ( a click is always with the left button unless stated otherwise)
Triple click
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Simple drag (button down, move mouse, button up)
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Double click drag (This is not a double click followed by a drag. But rather a double click with a move before the final release of the mouse button.)
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Triple click drag
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Shift click (away from the cursor)
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Ctrl + click
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Ctrl + click drag
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Answers to the questions:
characters a word words a paragraph paragraphs a sentence sentences
characters from cursor to clicked spot
characters: from the cursor to the end of the line clicked With the slanted arrow
To see the forward slanted arrow (with the top of the arrow to the right) move the icon to the left margin. The insertion icon will be replaced with the forward-slanting arrow.
When you move the cursor over a selection (highlighted text) you get and arrow that slants to the left and is a tiny bit smaller.
Describe the selection made when you do each of the following with the left margin arrow cursor showing. Use the same list of possible answers use on the previous page.
Double click
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Single click
Triple click
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Double click drag
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Shift click
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Ctrl + click
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Select (highlight) the sentence at the end of this paragraph and then press any letter key you want. Describe below what happens. d
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Select this text: [ bananas and pears] and copy it to the clip board ( Right click > Copy). Now select this text: [ bananas and pears] and paste ( Right click > Paste). Describe what happens.
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(You should have mentioned the automatic deletion of text in the answers above.)
With MSWord 97 on new computers it is very difficult to make large selections. Try to select a few words of text starting near the bottom of the screen and then drag to extend the selection to include a few words beyond the end of the screen. You should find that the screen scrolls much to fast for you to control the selection. Try it.
Newer versions come with built-in speed control. There is only one method of selection listed above that will always let you make any desired selection (large or small) without the run-away scrolling problem. What is that method?
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