Okay, I can see how to “properly” use this as it was intended. Actually I was looking for something along the lines of rather than selecting the full work the multiple select is more like a multiple placement of the carat instead. So if I had the following:
The quick brown cat jumps over the lazy dog
I could multiple select the cursor at the end of “cat” and “dog” and then simply type “s” resulting in:
The quick brown cats jumps over the lazy dogs