I found a poll over at Hacker News via John Siracusa:
I am surprised at how many people, like me, who select text to highlight what they are reading. Some reasons include tracking your reading position, increasing text contrast, or as an “intra-page” bookmark.
It seems natural for me to highlight as I go and I almost didn’t realize I do this. I wonder if others have noticed it. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone (friends or coworkers) do it…
[i do this all the time] RT @devinreams: New post via Hacker News: Do you select text while reading? http://t.co/ziPBt29d
I do this too. And I find that my “scrolling while reading” behavior on iOS serves much the same purpose for me (“tactile” tracking of my place). It provides me with a odd level of comfort that reading a paginated display (e-ink Kindle, iOS Kindle app or Instapaper in pagination mode) doesn’t.
Ah yes! I tend to scroll the text to align with the top of the view on iOS devices. This explains why pagination drives me nuts.
I do this for three reasons, depending on my needs at the time: to track my reading position, to increase text contrast, and as a placeholder to pick up reading later. Been doing it for years, too.