Whether you’ve taken to the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard like a duck to water, or are more of a one-finger-at-a-time typist, there are plenty of shortcuts, tips and tricks that can improve your iTyping experience.
Here, we’ve rounded up ten useful ways to be faster and more productive with your iPhone’s keyboard. We hope these tricks are handy for anyone new to the platform, or those who have not had the time to really experiment.
Ranging from basic how-tos to more advanced trickery, have a read of our ten tips below, and do share any keyboard-, language- or other text entry-related hints you’ve discovered on your iDevice in the comments.
1. HOW TO: Add an International Keyboard
From the home screen, go to “Settings,” then “General,” then scroll down to see “Keyboard” and tap this option. You can then select “International Keyboards” and scroll through the list to add the language you need.
Now, for all iPhone OS versions, when you have the keyboard on the screen, if you hit the little globe icon next to the space bar, you can switch between languages at the press of a button.
2. HOW TO: Quickly Add a Special Symbol
3. HOW TO: Use a Sentence-Stopping Shortcut
4. HOW TO: Add Proper Names to the Dictionary
New to iOS4 is the ability to customize the iPhone’s dictionary and add words to it that you use often, such as proper names, brands or lesser-known places.
Although previous versions of the iPhone OS’s dictionary did offer the ability to “learn” the word preferences of the user, this new feature gives the user complete control.
To add a word, go to “Settings,” then “General,” then “Keyboard,” then tap “Edit User Dictionary” and hit the plus icon in the top right to enter your word. It will then be listed alphabetically and can be edited or deleted as necessary.
5. HOW TO: Insert Punctuation More Quickly
If you’re still adding in symbols and numbers this way, then boy, do we have a treat for you. This will take a teeny bit of getting used to, but from now on, the next time you want to add punctuation, pause typing, press and hold the “123″ key, then without removing your finger (or thumb!) from the screen, slide it over to land on what you want to insert.
As you release your digit from the display, the symbol will have been entered into your text and you’ll be back on the alpha keyboard.
6. HOW TO: Quickly Change .com to Other Domains
Similarly, when composing an e-mail, pressing and holding the period will offer a list of domain endings to make entering e-mail addresses super quick.
7. HOW TO: Display Character Counts in Messages
8. HOW TO: Delete Text Using Gesture Controls
Simply shake the handset and you’ll get a pop-up asking you if you want to “Undo Typing” or “Cancel.” Hit undo, and the latest lot of gibberish will be gone forever.
9. HOW TO: Reset the Dictionary
There is a way to fix this by resetting the dictionary, although this will also delete any words you’ve added via the “Edit User Dictionary” option we highlighted above.
If you want a clean slate for your phone’s vocab, simply open “Settings,” select “General,” scroll right down to the bottom to “Reset,” select that and then hit the red “Reset Dictionary” button which will erase any settings that have been overly forgiving of bad spelling or grammar.
10. HOW TO: Change the Font in Notes
However, there is a workaround that will enable you to scribe your notes in the arguably more classy Helvetica. Simply add a special symbol-based international keyboard (Korean, Japanese and Chinese all worked for us) and then when you’re next in “Notes,” change the language (via the globe button), type something, and then change it back to English.
Everything you type after that will be in Helvetica, rather than Marker Felt — thanks and praise be to the font gods!
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