Clicker liberation front

Kriston at grammar.police makes a stink about one of those things that had been bothering me but that I had been too lazy to blog about: the new New York Times "contextual dictionary":

Oh, I double-click words—and how. I'm a habitual screensifter. When I'm reading something on the screen, I click, double-click, drag, and highlight words. Any and all words, whole blocs of text, I don't care. Idly but mercilessly, and according to rules of symmetry and aesthetics so sure and precise I won't detail them now, I highlight and grab and drag sentences, even whole paragraphs, anywhere I damn well please. If I want to just nervously click on words, that's what I do.

But the NYT wants to ruin my games—and worse still, prevent me from reading at all. I'll be the first to admit that screensifting is an obsessive–compulsive disorder (and probably a genetically inherited trait for which I'm not to blame), but nevertheless, there it is, absolutely unavoidable and necessary to the process of reading the digital fishwrap. Now, the double-clicking that happens accidentally and incidentally when I read the NYT online produces an endless, intolerable string of pop-up windows, each presenting dumb definitions for words I already know—words like "to" and "seven" and "November". It's enough to make a body read washingtonpost.com.Oh, I double-click words—and how. I'm a habitual screensifter. When I'm reading something on the screen, I click, double-click, drag, and highlight words. Any and all words, whole blocs of text, I don't care. Idly but mercilessly, and according to rules of symmetry and aesthetics so sure and precise I won't detail them now, I highlight and grab and drag sentences, even whole paragraphs, anywhere I damn well please. If I want to just nervously click on words, that's what I do.

But the NYT wants to ruin my games—and worse still, prevent me from reading at all. I'll be the first to admit that screensifting is an obsessive–compulsive disorder (and probably a genetically inherited trait for which I'm not to blame), but nevertheless, there it is, absolutely unavoidable and necessary to the process of reading the digital fishwrap. Now, the double-clicking that happens accidentally and incidentally when I read the NYT online produces an endless, intolerable string of pop-up windows, each presenting dumb definitions for words I already know—words like "to" and "seven" and "November". It's enough to make a body read washingtonpost.com.

Fight the power!