The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
A block of text is defined as a section of text that can be selected. This selection preludes the performance of a specified task with the block. Such tasks include, editing, copying and pasting, moving the text to another location within the document or to another document, or deletion of the block of text altogether.
The text block that is selected is highlighted on the computer screen using the mouse. In a Windows environment the cursor is directed to the beginning or the end of the target area of text and the desired text highlighted. Typically this is achieved by depressing the left-hand key of the mouse or mouse pad (although the mouse can be configured so that the right key or portion of the pad is depressed) at the same time as the cursor is dragged by the mouse to mark the other boundary of the block. The appropriate mouse button is then clicked to define the block of text.
The ability to manipulate a block of text is a fundamental component of word processing programs. In addition, the definition of a block of text (sometimes the text contained with a table entry or a page) allows importing and exporting of text to other programs that may further process the text or graphical data (i.e., transition of text to graphics (e.g., .tiff files) or the reverse process whereby optical character recognition programs (OCR) programs) turn fax or graphical representations into text that may be used by word processing programs.