A system and method processes selected regions in an electronic text to edit the selected region on a continuous basis, without destroying the original highlighting and forcing the user to re-bracket the entire section. The user can extend, retract, and separate selected regions. These selected regions can then be universally processed with any function available to the processor, including highlighting, printing, copying, deleting, or spell checking. The invention economizes on keystrokes and cursor actions, since the whole region of text desired to be highlighted does not have to be rebuilt every time a change is made. The invention also enables a user to select text by moving a cursor from left to right and top to bottom, and to deselect text by moving a cursor from right to left and bottom to top.