21.2 Mouse Commands for Words and Lines

These variants of mouse-1 select entire words or lines at a time. Emacs activates the region around the selected text, which is also copied to the kill ring.

Double-mouse-1

Select the text around the word which you click on.

Double-clicking on a character with symbol syntax (such as underscore, in C mode) selects the symbol surrounding that character. Double-clicking on a character with open- or close-parenthesis syntax selects the parenthetical grouping which that character starts or ends. Double-clicking on a character with string-delimiter syntax (such as a single-quote or double-quote in C) selects the string constant (Emacs uses heuristics to figure out whether that character is the beginning or the end of it).

Double-Drag-mouse-1

Select the text you drag across, in the form of whole words.

Triple-mouse-1

Select the line you click on.

Triple-Drag-mouse-1

Select the text you drag across, in the form of whole lines.