iPhone Diary Day 13: Keyboard tricks

The keyboard gets plenty of criticism for not working in landscape mode (in applications other than Safari) and for being difficult to use for people with big thumbs - but I'm sure that it will improve as time goes on.

The following tips that have made my iPhone tapping a lot easier:

• If you accidentally tap a wrong letter, instead of picking up your finger, tapping delete then tapping the correct letter, simply slide your finger over to the correct key. I can't tell you how much time this has saved me. (Thanks Stuart)

• The other huge keyboard time saver is something I call "quick punctuation." When you need a period or comma, rather than tapping the punctuation button, tapping your period or comma, switching back to the regular keyboard (three taps), simply tap the punctuation key then slide (don't lift) your finger over to the punctuation key that you need. When you pick up your finger the keyboard automatically switches back to text mode. (Thanks Rob)

• Some contractions are automatic, tapping "Ive" turns to "I've," "dont" becomes "don't" and "cant" changes to "can't" but others aren't. iPhone doesn't suggest contractions for "will" words like "I'll," "he'll," and "they'll." TUAW notes tapping a third "l" (i.e. "Illl") suggests the proper contraction.

How fast you you type on your iPhone? Can you beat 35WPM?