Some people have no problem tapping those tiny virtual keys; others struggle
for days. Either way, here are some tips:
Don’t be freaked out by the tiny narrow keys. Apple knows that your
fingertip is fatter than that.
So as you type, use the whole pad of your fi nger or thumb. Go ahead—
tap as though you’re trying to make a fi ngerprint. Don’t try to tap with
only a skinny part of your fi nger to match the skinny keys. You’ll be surprised
at how fast and accurate this method is. (Tap, don’t press.) This may sound like California New-Age hooey, but trust the keyboard.
Don’t get hung up on individual letters, pausing to check the result, and
so on. Just plow on.
Start out with one-finger typing. Two-thumb, BlackBerry-style typing usually
comes much later. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you start out that way.
If you make a mistake, don’t reflexively go for the Backspace key (V).
Instead, just beneath the word you typed, you’ll find the iPhone’s proposed
replacement. The software analyzes the letters around the one
you typed and, more often than not, figures out what you really meant.
For example, if you accidentally type imsame, the iPhone realizes that
you meant insane, and suggests that word.
To accept its suggestion, tap the Space bar or any piece of punctuation,
like a period or question mark.
To ignore the suggestion, tap it with your fi nger.
The suggestion feature can be especially useful when it comes to contractions,
which are normally clumsy to type because you have to switch
to the punctuation keyboard to find the apostrophe.
So you can save time by deliberately leaving out the apostrophe in contractions
like I’m, don’t, can’t, and so on. Type im, dont, cant, and so on.
The iPhone proposes I’m, don’t, or can’t, so you can just tap the Space bar
to fi x the word and continue.
But what about contractions like “he’ll,” “we’ll,” and “we’re?” if you leave out the
apostrophe on these words, you get “hell,” “well,” and “were,” which are legitimate
words—and the iPhone won’t correct them!
Solution: Double the last letter. if you type helll, welll, and weree, the iPhone will
suggest “he’ll,” “we’ll,” and “we’re.”
The suggestion feature also kicks in when the iPhone thinks it knows
how you intend to complete a correctly spelled word. For example, if you
type fathe, the suggestion says father. This trick usually saves you only a
letter or two, but that’s better than nothing.
although you don’t see it with your eyes, the sizes of the keys on the iPhone
keyboard are actually changing all the time. That is, the software enlarges the
“landing area” of certain keys, based on probability.
For example, suppose you type tim. Now, the iPhone knows that no word in the
language begins timw or timr—and so, invisibly, it enlarges the “landing area” of
the e key, which greatly diminishes your chances of making a typo on that last
letter. Cool.
Without cursor keys, how are you supposed to correct an error that you
made a few sentences ago? Easy—use the Loupe.
Hold your fi ngertip down anywhere in the text until you see the magnifi
ed circle appear. Without lifting your fi nger, drag anywhere in the text;
you’ll see that the insertion point moves along with it. Release when the
blinking line is where you want to delete or add text, just as though you’d
clicked there with a mouse.
in the Safari address bar, you can skip the part about waiting for the loupe to
appear. once you’ve clicked into the address, just start dragging to make it appear
at once.
Don’t bother using the Shift key to capitalize a new sentence. The iPhone
does that capitalizing automatically. (To turn this feature on or off, tap
HomeÆSettingsÆGeneralÆKeyboardÆAuto-Capitalization.)
