The selection indicator in SlickEdit (located in the status area) not only shows the type of selection (character, line, or block), it counts the number of characters or lines in a selection. This is handy if you need to measure the length of a word or string, or count the number of lines in a function. For example, there are space requirements for the documentation that is displayed on the Options dialog for each option. Before sending the docs to the programmer, we use the selection indicator to make sure the text doesn't extend past a certain number of characters. See "count selected characters" or "count selected lines" in the Help > Index for more information.