Summary: create keyboard shortcuts on your iPad to make it quicker write notes and emails.

I first got an iPad about 10 months ago and the keyboard is nowhere as quick to type on as ergonomic keyboard for my workstation. What does however make typing on the iPad faster are some common shortcuts. For example, when I type “zfyi” it offers to expand that to “saw this, thought it might be something you find of interest… “. Simply pressing the space bar when that popup suggestion occurs will replace the original text with the suggested text. Pressing the small “x” will let you continue with the text you typed.

You can create a number of shortcuts, for example:

• addrw for your work address
• addrh for you home address
• sigw for your signature block
• zsc for “Schedule for”
• zu for “Update”
• add in your colleagues initials so you can quickly enter their name

Now I type in “zsc bh” and it expands to “Schedule for Ben Hamilton “. This makes taking notes in a meeting much quicker. Build out your shortcuts with phrases that cover the actions you commonly need to type. Update, schedule for, organise a meeting with, send email update, etc. if you have common paragraphs of text, make a shortcut for those.

As a bonus tip, if you start your shortcuts with a “z” this can make it easier. Why? Because very few words start with “z” and the “z” letter is on all the default iDevice keyboards. This means you don’t accidentally start a shortcut and you don’t need to change the keyboard view to start typing it. if you’ve prefixed it with a “]” for example (which is what my workstation shortcuts used to start with) then it can take more time typing the shortcut than the actual text you want.

Have you found any shortcuts that have been particularly helpful?