A Text Selection Technique Using Word Snapping

Conventional copy-and-paste technique for touch screen devices utilizes region handles to specify text snippet. The region handles appear so as to select the initially tapped word, and the user controls the region handles. Most of the text-selection task is performed at the boundary of words, however, the minimum movement unit of the region handle is still a character. We propose a context- sensitive text-selection method for the tablet OSs. For the initial consideration, we investigated a word-snapping method that meant a word as a minimum movement unit. From our experiment, we confirmed that the word-snapping method can significantly reduce the text-selection time if the target text consists of one or two words, and no line breaks exist