iPhone Tips

You know how some mistyped words with contractions don't get auto-corrected because the spelling without an apostrophe is also a word? That is, if you want the word "we'll" and instead type "well," it assumes you wanted "well." Same for "it's" and "its." So here's a hack from Lifehacker that solves that problem (and also saves you from having to flip back to the punctuation screen for that apostrophe). If you want "we'll," type "welll" (yes, that's three L's at the end there) and it will auto-correct to "we'll." Similarly, if you want "it's," type "itss." It also seems to work for "shelll" and "she'll," but only sometimes for "helll" and "he'll." (I hope you all know that when an auto-correction is suggested, you accept it by just continuing to type; you reject it by tapping the little X on the word.)

Meanwhile, speaking of flipping back to the screen that has all the numbers and punctuation, did you know that if you let your finger linger for a second on the ".?123" square, the other keyboard screen will appear and then you can then just slide your finger up to the character you need? Then, when you let go, you're still on the alphabet screen! Very convenient! (This works between any two keyboard screens.)

And I hope you all know that two taps of the space bar will give you a period followed by a space and a capital letter ready to begin your next sentence.

Here's a trick that has been very useful to me: If you frequently want to type in all caps, go to Settings --> General --> Keyboard and then slide the Enable Caps Lock switch to On. Now when you double-click the shift arrow for caps, you'll get all caps (the shift arrow turns blue) until you double-click again to turn it off.

You've probably already figured out that holding down the .com key when entering a Web address or email address will give you the options of .net, edu., and .gov:

 

Well, there are also options available for accented letters (for instance, hold down the E to get accented E's)

or the $ key for different currency symbols, the ?/! symbols for upside-down ?/! symbols, and more. Play around and you're sure to find more!

And in case you're wondering how I got all these iPhone screen shots, you just hold down the power button at the top and then press the circular home key once. A screen shot will be saved to your photo library. Awesome, eh?

Comments

[Tonya]

Wow, these are great! Several of them I didn't know — and I DID wonder how you got the screen shots! Very helpful stuff.

[Conor]

The only one I knew was the accent - thanks so much!

[Elena]

I think I'm finally going to take the plunge and get an iPhone! (Although this makes me start to wonder if it's going to be too complicated...)

[Kelly]

Thanks. I did not know the one about the accented letters. :)

[Peggy Butler]

I read this the day you posted it and never thanked you, so I will now, because I'm about to RT it, as this is all applicable on the iPad. Great article; thank you! I didn't know about the very useful contraction trick.

@pobutler on Twitter

[Monster Beats]

iphone has become a necessity in our lives