I’m amazed that so far I’ve been unable to find this documented anywhere. I have an iPad (9th generation). I’m only asking about on-screen keyboards. On the alphabetic keyboard, I can type a “?” by pressing the shift-up button followed by the “? .” key, On the numeric keyboard that I get by pressing “.?123”, I can type a “?” by ficking down on the “? .” key… but only if “Enable Key Flicks” is enabled. How can I type a “?” on that keyboard when “Enable Key Flicks” is not(!) enabled.
If I press the “#+=“ key, then on the alternate numeric keyboard, I can type “?” by pressing the “?.” key, but it appears I cannot type “.” in that mode using that key.
I just don’t understand the logic behind the labeling of the “?.” key. Same question applies to the “!,” key.
I happen to use my iPhone a lot more for typing than the iPad, but the iPhone does not have this weirdness.
It seems strange, but I think that they label the key in numeric key mode to let you know that you can type a question mark after pressing the #+= key (located where the shift key normally is.) In that mode they don’t show the period, just like pressing the Shift key in the ABC mode doesn’t show the period.
You’ll note that unlike the “flickable” keys the comma and period keys, with the shiftable exclamation point and question marks, are all black and always shown if you turn off flickable keys - flickable characters on all of the alphabetic keys are gray.
So the period is typable in lowercase ABC mode or “lowercase” ?123 mode, but not when you press the Shift key or the #+= key.
That helps. I now get that the “#+=“ key is a “shift” key rather than a “mode” key, which makes sense. However, I always see the period on the “?.” key whether or not either of the shifts are in effect. Same for the comma on the “!,” key. Which iOS are you running? I’m on 18.2.
I was intrigued by the question, thanks for posting.
I checked an iPad on 18.1 and observe:
In alphabet mode, the ? or ! can be Flicked from the “?.” or “!,” key even though not shown small and medium gray like other Flickable characters
Same mode, Flicking off, one can tap-n-slide to get a ? or ! by tapping and holding the Shift key, sliding finger to ? key and releasing
the period can be placed at end of a sentence with double spacebar if " “.” Shortcut " is enabled
hm. on the alternate numeric keyboard (sans period key), I tried tap and hold on all the keys to see if period was an alternate (as with other keyboard modes) and didn’t find it. I tried tap-n-slide with the ABC character and was able to get a period but then the keyboard reverted to the number and charactor mode, not the mode I was in, kind of defeating the purpose of the move
Looking forward to further replies!
I don’t know what you mean by “sans period key”. On my iPad with iPadOS 18.2, the key with the question mark always shows the question mark at the top and the period at the bottom regardless of what shift/mode keys are in effect.
However, I cannot type a period directly in the “#+=“ shift mode, as you say.
Sorry, not clear enough! I don’t know the proper name for it, the keyboard reached by tapping the “123” key then the “#+=” key. And yes, I don’t see a possibility from there to type a period ‘directly’.