Amazing Tips - Punctuation and special characters on smart devices

Amazing Tips - Punctuation and Special Characters on the iPad, Tablet or Smartphone 

For those who like to use punctuation, accents and more!

Now I am aware that punctuation is falling by the wayside, heck, not just punctuation but writing in complete sentences is too! For those of you who still care, here are some amazing tips to use with your smart device (phone, iPad, tablet, or just about anything with a touch keyboard).

Recently, while writing a message on my smartphone, I held down the period key for an extra beat and up popped a menu of choices.  Because I was so surprised to see a menu appear, and because the menu disappeared very quickly, I didn't see the options, so I held the period key down again. This time I was able to observe some of the choices. They included the dash, colon, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, @ sign and more. Who knew that? I've had a smart phone for years and have always switched to the numeric keyboard to get these alternative characters.

That got me thinking about what other keys were special on my phone. I discovered that when I held down the vowel keys (a, e, i, o and u) the menu displayed accented characters for keying in foreign words such as résumé or déjà vu. This was getting interesting, what else was there I wondered. Since my finger was on the top line of letters, I held down a non-vowel key and saw a number popped up as an alternative. Turns out you don’t need to switch to the numeric keyboard to type numbers just hold down one of the ten keys on the top row and you can insert the numbers one through 0!

Most of the other consonant characters didn't hold any secrets but the c and n showed accented letters while the s revealed a ß. I’m not sure when you use one of those but if you've been looking for it, now you know where it is.

Well I thought if the alpha keyboard had secrets, could the numeric keyboard be hiding its own group? So off I went to the numeric keyboard, holding down the number keys. Yes, more secrets were to be found here! The 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 0 keys were hiding fractions! Not that I include many fractions. In fact I can't really remember when I last inserted a fraction in an email or message, but now I know where to find them.  I continued my journey of the numeric keyboard and was rewarded when I got to the dollar sign and percentage keys where I discovered foreign currency symbols and the ‰ character. The dash has em and en dashes, the plus also had a ± and the parenthesis characters reveal brackets as well as < and > symbols.

Moving on to the bottom row I found that the asterisk can also be used to insert daggers(†) , double daggers (‡) and stars! The apostrophe and quotation keys had variations on those signs and the exclamation point and question mark keys had the upside down variations.

Once I was finished exploring my smartphone I wondered whether or not this alternate keyboard universe applied to any other devices. I had an iPad nearby so I started holding down on some of the keys and found a similar phenomenon! Not all of the options were the same but enough were to make it worth exploring if an iPad is your device of choice. I don’t have a touchpad tablet handy but I’m willing to bet that it holds similar secrets. Write in the comments section if you find that these tips work on a tablet too. 

Split your iPad keyboard

While I was looking for more information on this subject on the internet, I came across one more interesting keyboard option that’s available on the iPad … you can split the keyboard on your screen to make it more comfortable to use! There’s two ways to make this happen:

Tap the keyboard key on the far right of the keyboard and tap “Split.” 

OR 

Use your two hands and drag the keyboard left and right.

Like magic you have part of the keyboard on the left and part on the right. To get the two parts back together again repeat the actions with the keyboard key or drag the two parts together.

Now here’s the really crazy thing about the split keyboard … there are keys available even if you can’t see them! There is one extra key on the inside of each row both left and right that you can use if you remember they are there. See the picture below, it’s easier than trying to describe this phenomenon. 

I discovered this tip while working on my second book 100 MORE Amazing Computer Tips. This second book will have lots of iPad, Gmail and Windows 8 tips along with general computer advice. While waiting for it to arrive at Amazon, why don't you buy my current book, 100 Amazing Computer Tips. It's available at Amazon.com as well as Barnes & Noble in both print ($14.99) and ebook ($7.99) versions. There's also a handy link on the top right side of this window for your shopping convenience.



If you have already bought a copy of my book, THANK YOU! I hope you would consider writing a review on Amazon.com.


Happy computing!

Diane

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