Quite possibly the most infuriating thing I've experienced in any software I've ever used. Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, decided that dragging your mouse over text isn't good enough; to make it "easier" they need to select wordish boundaries for you. So if I want to select "I dislike Microsoft" out of the text "I dislike Microsoftish business practices," you must first select "I dislike Microsoftish ", paste it, then trim the "ish " by hand. Wow. That makes my work so much more productive! Seeing as I've only been using a mouse for about 10 years, I need help deciding what I need to select. Thanks Microsoft!.

The rules, as near as I can figure them out:

  • If the selection is within a word, select individual letters.
  • If the selection travels over a wordish boundary, select the whole word plus the space after it
  • If it's in wordish selection mode, if the mouse travels over a word, select the entire word, the period, semicolon, colon, or comma after it (if it exists), and the next space.
  • If a word is double-clicked, randomly choose whether to include trailing spaces, punctuation, or whole sentences.
  • Angle brackets don't count as anything; so if you attempt to copy the html out of <b>this</b>, good luck to you.
  • Selecting a space is also random; it might select the space, it might select each word surrounding the space. You can never tell.