How to select one paragraph of text with just one click?

Question

Is there a way to select one paragraph of text with just one click? In LibreOffice, Mozilla Firefox or Ubuntu Mate in general.

I have to copy and paste blocks of text everyday and this feature would make my life so much easier.

Answer 1

I don't think you can do it in literally one click, but "triple-clicking" works for me every time.

Sometimes, pasting with one click works: press the scroll wheel button ("middle click") to paste the copied text (thanks Sumeet Deshmukh).

Answer 2

Use Click+Shift+Click to select the paragraph of choice. This way, user doesn't need to "hold the click, then drag cursor" to make text selection.

There are essentially two steps to make the text selection.

1. Place the I-beam pointer at the beginning of the paragraph and click once. This will put the blinking text cursor at starting point.

2. Move I-beam pointer to the end of paragraph (or any end point of choice), then hold down Shift key and click once again. This will mark the end point and highlight any text in between.

The following animated GIF image illustrates how it works.

Despite above is known to Windows users to select block of text or select between two points in Word documents, this similarly works for Ubuntu/Linux users to select text in LibreOffice, Firefox and other application programs.

This may be tricky, if the cursor is invisible by default. Fortunately, Firefox has an option to use/show the cursor key in Preferences ➜ Advanced ➜ General ➜ Accessibility. Other application programs may have similar workarounds.