Sometimes want might want to select a piece of text without selecting till the end of the line. A good example would be to select two adjacent columns from a text file.

To achieve this keep the ALT key pressed before starting to select the text and select the text as usual. (I don’t know whether there is an equivalent key on the Mac). Unfortunately not all applications allow you to do this, but you can try it out in Notepad2, Textpad or even Microsoft Word.