As long as you want to select entire words, just double tap and drag -- same as desktop to do word-based selection. And even if you don't want to do word-based

As long as you want to select entire words, just double tap and drag -- same as desktop to do word-based selection. And even if you don't want to do word-based selection, double tap is a good way to start selection and have the selection carets close to where you want them that you can easily manually adjust.