I'm kind of happy to have just learned I'm not the only person in the world who habitually selects like this. I've done this for as long as I can remember, and the NYT thing drove me nuts as well.

Oddly enough I guess I always habitually deselect as well, so I've never noticed this gmail feature. Pretty useful.

Now if it browsers supported Sublime Text-style multiple selections for quoting several different bits of a long email, that'd be perfect.

On a sidenote it's kind of fascinating how polarised people are about this feature.