Ah, figured out why you see what you see. Holding shift disables vertex snapping, so you can hover near a vertex and get a point on the edge, not snapping to the vertex. Soo, I guess don't do that unless you want that! 😃 It gets a little tricky since there are only so many modifiers and they get reused for various things.
Seems we can improve holding shift when really over the vertex. Let's see!
Anyway, your tip may be shift to disable vertex snapping. I'll put it in the user guide.
Couple other tips come to mind:
alt+<letter> to show views. It's fast, pretty easy to remember because we don't use alt+<letter> for anything except showing/hiding views, and the letter corresponds to the starting letter in English of the view you want (at least for the most common views): D for dopesheet, G for graph, T for tree, etc.
Soft selection is useful, some people don't even find it (they don't look very hard!). ctrl+alt+click to remove from the soft selection can be helpful. ctrl+alt+box select also works. Soft selection works in edit mode, though maybe it's not commonly needed there.
Middle mouse button can help to make a new selection without deselecting first, especially when making box selections. Also box selections don't require fine mouse movements, which can really add up to avoiding wrist pain when animating all day (I highly suggest a Kensington Expert Mouse!). Middle mouse always gives you selection, and if you drag you always get box selection, never manipulation. Unlike ctrl+drag box selection, mmb+drag doesn't add to the current selection, it creates a new selection. Use ctrl+mmb+drag to box select and add to the selection. Modifiers like ctrl+alt+box select for removing from soft selection actually only need the ctrl to for the box selection box, so you can alt+mmb to box select remove from soft selection.
That is unless you check Middle mouse pans in the settings, of course! Some people like that but it's not the default since not all mice have middle mouse button, but they do (should) have a right button. Panning is too important to be inaccessible.
You can box deselect by selecting vertices, then box select only already selected vertices to deselect them. This can save a fair amount of time, occasionally.
Right click a tree annotation to select it without scrolling (in 4.0.81-beta).
