Last week at ABA TECHSHOW, one of the tips that I discussed in one of my iPhone presentations was the ability to hold down on a key on the iPhone U.S. keyboard to see a pop-up list of additional letters or symbols that are not on the main keyboard. For example, if you hold down the letter "E" you will see the following:
When I was preparing my slides, I couldn't find a good comprehensive list of all of the additional letters and symbols that could be typed by holding down a key, so I created my own list for my presentation, and here it is for those of you who could not attend.
The vowels A, E, I, O and U:
The consonants C, L, N, S, Y and Z:
The punctuation marks and symbols:
Additionally, there are many characters that the iPhone is capable of creating or viewing that cannot be typed from the U.S. keyboard, even if you hold down a key. However, there is a simple web app called created by developer Neven Mrgan called Glyphboard that you can use to access some of those characters. (For example, I wrote this post last year about using Glyphboard to create an en dash.) To use Glyphboard, go to this address on your iPhone: http://mrgan.com/gb/ Then follow the
on-screen directions and press the plus sign at the bottom of your
Safari screen to Add to Home Screen. Then click on the icon that you
just added to your home screen to start the web app, and you can copy a
special character from Glyphboard and then paste it someplace else, such
as in an e-mail. Glyphboard includes 48 special characters.
Note, however, that some of those characters may not display on a PC. The following characters can be created with Glyboard and should display on most PCs (although this can vary from browser to browser and setup to setup), so you are likely safe to add them to your e-mails and text messages if you want to be fancy:
☺ ♥ ♪ ♫⇧ ↑ ↓ ← → ♀ ♂ – © ™ ∞ ± ≠ π ² ¼ ⅓ ½ ¾ ¶ ♠ ♦ ♣
On the other hand, the following characters can be created and displayed on the iPhone using Glyphboard but are unlikely to display correctly on a PC (although again this can vary from system to system), so think about what kind of computer the other person is using before you include them in an e-mail.
☹ ★ ✔ ♨ ☂ ✈ ⌚ ⌘ ⌥ ⌃ ☞ ☮ ☯ ✿ ✉ ☎ ✄ ☠ ☃ ✪
And just in case you are viewing this post on a PC and the above line looks like gibberish to you, here is an image of those characters that iPhones and Macs can see:
I hope that you find this list helpful.
