Swype for Advanced Users

A tweet from Swype led me to the page for Swype Tips and Tricks. I watched most of the videos, but in general found that the tricks were simple enough that they could be easily digested in the form of text, so here they are:

  • Double letter: swype in a small circle and back onto that letter
  • Capitalize letter midsentence: after swyping over the letter to be capitalized, swype into the space above the keyboard, then back down to the word’s next letter on the keyboard
  • Capitalize entire word: same as above, but swype a loop in the space above the keyboard
  • Punctuation: swype from any punctuation key (even if it’s an alternate character on the keyboard), and onto the spacebar. That punctuation and a space are inserted.
  • Apostrophes: as you’re entering a word, swype over the apostrophe button in the appropriate location
  • Correction: double tap a word to bring up a correction menu
  • Add to dictionary: type a word in manually, and press the spacebar (only works for words, there is another process for complex entities like an e-mail address)
  • Hopping: for words that have an ambiguous swype pattern (e.g. pit vs. pot vs. put), “hop” between letters by moving out and above them and into the next letter from above
  • Symbols: press and hold on a letter to add its alternate content
  • Speed: swype can guess many words even if not every letter in them is “hit”. Try typing entire messages without any corrections as a “first pass”, then proofread the message and make corrections.

Posted on December 19, 2010 from Calgary

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My name is Brandur. I'm a polyglot software engineer and part-time designer working at Heroku in San Francisco, California. I'm a Canadian expat. My name is Icelandic. Drop me a line at brandur@mutelight.org.

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