Tips for manual text entry on the Palm

Tips for manual text entry on the Palm

Document number: 39055

Your Palm comes with a stylus for tapping the touch screen to make selections. You can also use the stylus to "write" on the touch screen and enter text into your Palm. "Graffiti" is the application that comes with the Palm. These same tips will mostly apply to any of the alternatives. To find alternative software, such as "Jot", and better entry tools (such as a thicker longer stylus) see the web resources listed in document 39043 — PDA and Palm Pilot FAQ's.

Here are some tips to successfully using the stylus to manually enter text into the Palm:

The graffiti portion of the screen has an alpha side (left) and a numeric side (right). Make sure you are on the correct side of the screen.
Try to avoid randomly touching the screen. A single touch (tap) turns on punctuation so that the next character you try to make will most likely be punctuation, not a letter or number. Two taps is a period.
An upward vertical stroke will turn on "Caps" for the next character. If you want to turn on "Caps lock" do two upward vertical strokes.
Use a larger (longer and thicker) stylus.
Writing at an angle can cause character recognition problem. Hold the stylus straight up and down.
Make your characters large.
Lifting the stylus before the stroke is finished or adding hooks or curves to the stroke will cause problems in the character recognition.
Ensure that you are writing in the correct sides of the graffiti area. The numbers must be to the right of the small marker at the top and bottom of the graffiti area and the letters must be to the left.
Set your preferences to display the "Graffiti Help" screen in any application. To set this preference, launch the "Prefs" application, select the "Buttons" category, press the "Pen…" button, and select "Graffiti Help" in the drop down list.
Play the Giraffe game. Install the Giraffe game from the CD-ROM that comes with your Pilot. See document 39054 — How to install or uninstall Palm Applications.
Try the alternate strokes for characters that might be more natural for you.
Rethinking how you draw the characters may help. Try writing the "v" backwards. For the letter "g", write a number "6" in the alpha side of the graffiti area. Try a "y" by drawing an "8" in the alpha side of the graffiti area. For a "b" draw a number 3 in the alpha side.
If you accidentally turn on the caps or punctuation, a backspace stroke will turn it off.

Additional tips:

Use shortcuts to easily write frequently used phrases. Tap Applications, and then Prefs. From the upper-right pop-up menu, choose ShortCuts. Include a space after each expanded word to save additional time.
Draw a line from the Graffiti area straight up onto the screen. That's the power penstroke - and you can define its effect. The Buttons panel of the Preferences screen lets you set up the power stroke to: (a) make the onscreen keyboard appear, (b) summon the Graffiti cheat sheet, (c) turn the backlight on or off, (d) turn off and lock the PalmPilot, or (e) beam the current data (Palm III only).