Typing Accents on the iPhone and iPod Touch

Gizmodo recently posted out that keyboard localization and accents in SMS messages can lead to bloodbaths, so I figured it would be useful to point out how easy it is to put accents over letters on the iPhone; maybe it will save some lives.

The default view when the iPhone keyboard pops up on your screen shows a QWERTY keyboard, a shift key, a space bar, a delete key, a return key, and a button at the bottom-left that sends you off to find more symbols to type. All these buttons, yet there are no dedicated ones for accents. However, typing accents is quite possible. To add an accent to a letter, hold your finger over any key that permits accents and wait about one second. The button expands and a menu pops up above it with keys for any possible accents! Now just drag your finger to the accent you are looking for and let go, and the accented letter will appear.

To insert accents over capital letters, do the exact same thing except press the shift key before entering the accented letter.

Furthermore, This feature does not only apply to letters, but also to some symbols. In the “.?123″ symbols and numbers view, exclamation points and question marks can be flipped upside down by using this trick.

Inserting accented characters is a really well thought-out feature of the iPhone keyboard and should actually be expanded. For example, Apple could add “sub-keys” to the number keys on the numbers and symbols page of the keyboard that correspond to the symbols inserted when one holds shift and presses on them on a standard QWERTY keyboard on their computer.

Although this would be less useful on an iPod Touch which does not have the iPhone’s SMS capabilities, I assume it is available on iPod Touches as well. If anyone could confirm this in the comments, that would be great!