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Tip: Typing a Period Quickly

Tuesday July 3, 2007 9:27 am PDT by Arnold Kim
This tip comes from David Pogue's Missing Manual and is appropriately titled "Pogue's Awesome iPhone Period-Typing Shortcut.

One difficulity in typing on the iPhone is adding proper punctuation as the punctuation keys are on an alternate keyboard, requiring you to press the ".?123" to switch to the puncutation keyboard and then click on "ABC" key to return to the Qwerty keyboard. But no more...

So heres what you can do, all in one motion:

1. Touch the ".?123" key, but dont lift your finger as the punctuation layout appears.

2. Slide your finger a half inch onto the period or comma key, and release.

Incredibly, the ABC layout returns automatically. You've typed a period or a comma with one finger touch instead of three. In fact, you can type ANY of the punctuation symbols the same way.

[ 45 comments ]

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MrMighty
Posted: 60 months ago

So here’s what you can do, all in one motion:

1. Touch the “.?123” key, but don’t lift your finger as the punctuation layout appears.

2. Slide your finger a half inch onto the period or comma key, and release.

Incredibly, the ABC layout returns automatically. You’ve typed a period or a comma with one finger touch instead of three. In fact, you can type ANY of the punctuation symbols the same way.


http://missingmanuals.com/pogues_awesome_iphone_typing_shortcut.csp
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davechen
Posted: 60 months ago
Very cool!
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iKwick7
Posted: 60 months ago
Sounds pretty cool- let's see if this is a solid speed improvement for me when typing.
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David R
Posted: 60 months ago
Thank You!
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elistan
Posted: 60 months ago
It works! Sweet!
You can multitouch it too if you prefer. Use your left thumb to hit the .?123 button, and use the right to touch the period button. As soon as you release either button, you get your period on the screen, and the keyboard goes back to the alpha layout. This only works with the period, not the comma from what I can tell.
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plumbingandtech
Posted: 60 months ago
NICEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....

thank you so much.
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dagger55
Posted: 60 months ago
Thank God. This is an acceptable solution.

I wish Apple would have showed us this!
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iSee
Posted: 60 months ago
let's see...

Yah, it works!

In fact it works for all the punctuation! [edit: oops, this was mentioned in the original post]

- /GH

IT WORKS WITH THE SHIFT BUTTON TOO!!!
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cwedl
Posted: 60 months ago
I should imagine he sits down with an apple engineer and asks them questions and also asks for tips about the iPhone.
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worldwearyeyes
Posted: 60 months ago
great news! and it works well too!
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