The keyboard, and making it bigger
Make the keys a size your fingers can hit, put the keyboard back together when it splits in half, and speak instead of typing when your hands would rather not.
A tablet keyboard is a picture of a keyboard, which means it can be any size, in any position, and it can be undone the moment it stops suiting you.
Two things go wrong with it, and both look alarming. It splits into two halves at the sides — that is a thumb-typing setting somebody triggered by accident. And it goes small — that is usually the tablet held the narrow way round. Neither is a fault.
Key points
- Put a split keyboard back together, and know that it was never broken
- Make the keys bigger so fewer letters go astray
- Use the microphone to speak a sentence instead of typing it
- Correct dictated words by tapping into them, like any other typing
What to remember
- On an iPad these live under General and then Keyboard; on most Android tablets under General management and then Keyboard. The switches themselves are the same.
- Dictation is a press-to-talk button, not an open microphone. It is far quicker than typing for anybody whose hands are not what they were.
- Saying "full stop", "comma" and "new line" puts the punctuation in for you.
Try this
Open Notes on your own tablet, press the little microphone on the keyboard, and say: "Milk, bread, and something for Sunday, full stop." Then look at what it wrote.
Practice: The keyboard, and making it bigger. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.