Explaining click and drag, take II

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

After rereading my message on techwr-l, it occurred to me that my
first response To Misti Tucker's question might have seemed a bit
snide; fortunately, she didn't take it that way. But it occurred to
me that there's an even simpler way to describe "click and drag", and
Misti's choice of "on paper" in her original question was the clue.
The solution is to drag actual paper! Here's how you'd describe it,
providing both the context and the methodology and thereby making for
a much better explanation than my first irreverent attempt (feel free
to make this text more concise and to polish it up a bit):

Clicking and dragging with the mouse serves the same function as
"clicking" and dragging with your own fingers: it lets you move
things around. For example, place a small book on your desk. Press
down on it with your index finger, then drag the book across your
desk. Now, let go with your finger. For as long as you held your
finger down, the book moved; when you lifted your finger, the book
stopped moving. Moving things around your screen with the mouse works
exactly the same way, with one exception: instead of placing your
finger on the screen, you use the mouse to place the cursor (that's
the arrow-shaped thing that moves when you move the mouse) on top of
the icon you want to move. Pressing and holding the mouse button
with your index finger works exactly the same way that pressing your
finger on the book worked.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Microsoft Word: It grows on you... but with a little fungicide,
you'll be feeling much better real soon now!"--GH


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