This drives everyone else crazy, except when I am doing it on the New York Times website, in which case it tries to define all these words for me, which drives me crazy...

Me too, Dani! Add http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSear... to your adblock filter and it will drive you crazy no more.

Thanks!

Nice, thankyou.

Besides, if you wanted the definition of a word, you install Ubiquity, hit Cntl+Space and type "def". It's fast, easy and free of annoying pop-ups!

I do too. In fact, that paragraph was kinda freaky to read because I'd just gotten done highlighting it a couple times.

Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure I only do it on webpages and not in Word docs or PDFs. So I wonder if it's a way of compensating for the lack of visible vertical reference points in web text.

Like, with Word docs and PDFs there is a page divider that any given text is visibly distant from. Maybe the lack of that in long web text is a problem.

As the article mentions. I won't, usually, highlight text in a word processor because I'll sometimes drag the text somewhere.

The interaction isn't free.

I've seen this in another form too: people who repeatedly draw a selection box around desktop icons. It's usually a background task while thinking or talking about something else or on the phone.

Me too.

And boy oh boy do we hate using the new york times website.

I also do this. At first, my girlfriend hated it. Now she has subconsciously started doing it herself. Just as planned.

I triple click to select the entire line/paragraph all the time. I don't even notice that I do it.

Me too. It really irks my wife if she's onlooking. That'll teach her to onlook I guess :-)