How To Set Up Word Substitution On Your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad
Last week I showed you how to set up a feature called “Word Substitution” on your BlackBerry. It is a very handy feature that allows you to create custom shortcuts while typing. Well today I’m going to show you how to set up that very same feature on your iPhone. (This will also work on iPods, and iPads) Apple introduced this feature with iOS 5 so you have to be on iOS 5. (All iPads, iPod Touch 3rd and 4th generation, and iPhone 3GS, 4/4S are capable of running iOS 5) The first step is to fire up that settings app. From there you are going to select “General” and then “Keyboard”. At the bottom of this menu you will see a list of shortcuts already programmed. If this is your first custom shortcut you will only see “omw” -> “on my way” listed here. Just below that list you will see the button for “Add New Shortcut…” Press that and we are in.
.
Here you have two boxes. The first is for your substitution, called “Phrase”. The second is for your shortcut, conveniently named “Shortcut”. Just as I put last week into the “Phrase” box, let’s enter “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”. Next in the “Shortcut” box let’s enter “tqbfjotld”. Verify that you’ve entered everything correctly and hit save.
Now you can use these shortcuts in just about any text entry field. When you type the shortcut a pop up will show the substitution phrase just like it does for spelling suggestions. You can either press the space bar to accept the substitute or press the “x” to throw it away. Now that you know how to use these shortcuts, tell us some of the shortcuts you have found to be useful in the comments.
About the Author
