Update: Also see Searching a book for a name without typing the name - added on June 14, 2009. This is older, for Kindle 2 and earlier.
See the Newer Copy-Paste article that includes the Kindle 3 method.
The Kindle 2 keyboard is no speed demon unless we're counting the speed of mistakes that can be made on those little keys. I've gotten used to it and use the keyboard often now because I'm forever searching in a book when I see a name and can't, as usual, remember who the character is, first introduced maybe 70 pages back.
Searching on a name brings up a listing of each Kindle page or "location" on which the person is mentioned, along with surrounding paragraph (and a link to the location). Because the often multiple results are listed in divided rows down the screen, I can also get more context for the character by perusing the several paragraph summaries.
Since I'm currently riveted by a new account of Columbine by Dave Cullen (which I'll report on later but the link includes the Washington Post review of the wholly different take Cullen has on the incident) and there are a lot of people involved, I do want to remember who they were and the circumstances.
HOWEVER, I didn't intend to talk about the book-search at first. But it's a great feature that many don't use. We have choices of searching the book or the entire Kindle or Wiki or the Net, using the 5-way button to select from all the options at the right.
In connection with Amazon's new feature that lets us see, on a private webpage for our Kindle books, all our highlights and notes for each Kindle book we own, I noticed I'd done a lot of highlighting which is helpful for discussions, or as memory-joggers, but I'd typed very few notes. Why? It's because it takes a while to type on the small keyboard, accurately.
Notes we make are ALSO copied into our "My Clippings" file, which we can copy or move to our computers to print or edit. So are highlighted sections.
However, sometimes I'd like to add a thought about something from a passage. I really don't want to type the passage, so I've wished for a way to copy and paste an excerpt to my book's "Notes" box and add, to that Note, shorthand thoughts, on the Kindle. This can be expanded on a computer later. Wish granted.
1. Begin to highlight the sentence(s) you want to reference in your note by pressing down the 5-way button where you want to begin the copy.
2. 5-way down, and at the last line to be excerpted, 5-way right, to the end of the referenced passage. Do NOT press the 5-way button down to end the highlight.
3. Instead, press the space bar. That'll bring up a search field.
4. Your now-highlighted passage is pasted into the search bar.
5. 5-way to the right, through several options, until you reach "note"
6. Press down the 5-way button on that, and you'll see the passage entered automatically into a Note box. You can now add to that Note by typing an entry.
Tip: Anything you highlight, copy and paste this way, you have options to, instead, Google or search in Wikipedia or your Kindle's dictionary or on the Kindle itself. But we've chosen "note" here because this makes notes about designated passages quite a bit easier.
( If this was helpful, please check the "Interesting" (or "Cool") box so I can get an idea of the level of interest for entries like this one. Thanks for taking the time. )
7/5/09 - I've eliminated the 'Interesting/Cool' Google widget because it caused the page to take too long to load, but on the Tips/Guides, it did give me good (easy to rate) indication of interest in those. Thanks to those who took the time to let me know.
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