Another example came to me in the shower; styling text. I think this may be an even simpler example of what I think John is talking about.
When writing, and you wish to emphasize a part of your text, with the computer you have a silly backwards approach;
- select the text
- press the style button (say underline)
- press the style button
- style the text.
Update:
Lotus Notes "Permanent Pen" and Highlighter might be worth a look.
Update:
- small change to beginning and links
- unexamined-software-interaction-idioms or unexamined-hci-idioms might be better tags.
- typo.