The University of St. Thomas
For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users at the University of St. Thomas

Tip: Hidden Keyboard Shortcuts

Published on: Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

When using the iPad keyboard for any sort of content creation, you will often find the need for special punctuation and other marks. The usual method for accessing these marks is to tap the Number Key key next to the spacebar and then choosing the mark needed from that screen. But this workflow can feel a bit unnatural and can ruin the flow when you’re in the middle of penning your latest opus. Luckily there is a handy shortcut for accessing some of the most common marks.

QuotesFor instance, if you need to place a double quotation mark, you can tap and hold the combo “?.” key and then slid your finger upwards. Doing so brings up a hidden popup key for the ” mark.

apostrophe

The same goes for the “!,” combo key. Tap and hold on the key and then slide your finger upward slightly will reveal the apostrophe mark.

The fun doesn’t stop there. Need an accent mark or a bullet character?   You can find these and more hidden behind many of the keys on the “number” keyboard screen (accessed by tapping the Number Key key next to the spacebar.)

  • Lisa Burke

    John — thanks for doing this blog, it’s great! Do you know if there is any hidden keyboard shortcut to bring up arrow keys?

  • jrkinsella

    Unfortunately, as far as I know, the answer is no. Instead, the paradigm is to use your finger to place the cursor and to invoke the copy, paste and replace functions. Press and hold your finger in a block of text and you’ll get a magnifying glass that will let you zoom in and accurately place the cursor where you want. Takes some getting used to, but it’s the only way to go.

    That is unless you are using Bluetooth keyboard. If you are, the arrow keys function as you would expect for highlighting text and the like. In fact, many of the keyboard Shortcuts we are used to (e.g. Copy and Paste) work exactly the same.

  • Kristin Wiley

    I knew about the .com shortcut (holding the .com button to pull up .net, .org, .edu etc), but the above information is new to me. Thanks.