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Tips and Tricks, Typing, Part 3
Learning SureType (continued)
In Part 2, we introduced some basics of SureType® with the objective of learning to ignore the screen while we type. If you haven’t mastered that skill, go back to Part 2 and practice that first. In Part 3, we’ll develop more advanced skills:
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How to let SureType predict words from its internal and custom dictionaries to save you keystrokes.
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How to handle situations when SureType doesn’t know a word and therefore can’t predict it.
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How to teach SureType new words so that future typing will be even faster.
Case 1: SureType Predicts Words Correctly
Back in Part 2, we typed “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” During our practice, we ignored the screen and just typed. But if we had peeked at the screen after typing the first few letters, we could have saved a few keystrokes by picking the correctly predicted word from the dropdown list that SureType provides. In the example below, let’s type “The quick brown fox ” and see how well SureType predicts the words as we type. As you’ll see, it predicts every word within 2 to 4 letters. If you prefer not to type the rest, you can just scroll the trackball to the correct word in the list, click it, and move on typing. When the animation below loops back to the beginning, watch carefully as this is illustrated:
<–Type “The quick brown fox ”
I believe everyone needs to develop her/his own style of using SureType. If you are a great typist, you may prefer to type each word to completion–you don’t need to choose the word from the prediction list. If you’re a really slow typist, you may prefer to type the least number of letters possible then scroll and click to complete each word. Your style will emerge in due time, so let’s not worry about it right now. Just realize there is no one “right way” to do it. Whatever works for you is fine.
Practice the exercise above on your own and see what feels right for you.
Case 2: SureType Predicts Words Incorrectly
So far our examples have not been much of a challenge for SureType. Let’s see what happens when SureType stumbles over words it doesn’t know (doesn’t have in its internal dictionary or your Custom Dictionary). Let’s borrow some crazy words from Lewis Caroll’s poem of nonsense verse, “Jabberwocky.” We’ll type several words from this verse: “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe: all mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.”
Let’s watch the animation below and key an eye out for the following:
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When the dropdown list shows predicted words, some are shown in normal weight but some are in italics. Why? Known words are shown in normal weight (meaning not bold or italics). Unknown words (if they are, indeed, real words) are shown in italics.
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When SureType makes, and sticks with, a bad prediction of the word being typed, the typist must use the delete/backspace key to backspace all the way back to the first wrong character. SureType learns from that and does not repeat the wrongly predicted character at that position within the word, so you will then move forward in your typing with a more correct word than before. This situation–when SureType has barely a clue what word you’re trying to type–is the single most frustrating experience using SureType. But the payoff is that SureType learns and records to your Custom Dictionary every new word you “teach” it through this experience.
OK–wait for the animation to loop back to the beginning (wait for “Let’s go!), then pay close attention:
<–Type “Twas brillig…”
In summary, here’s how SureType performed with several difficult words:
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twas: Match found in internal dictionary. Offered only one choice for that series of keystrokes–the right one.
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brillig: No match found in internal or custom dictionaries. Offered two choices for that series of keystrokes–one being correct.
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slithy: No match found. Offered two choices–one being correct.
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toves: No match found. Offered four choices–one being correct.
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gyre: No match found. Offered three wrong choices. One backspace got SureType back on track, leading to a correct choice.
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gimble: No match found. Offered eight wrong choices. Three backspaces got SureType back on track, leading to a correct choice.
Practice the exercise above and see if it doesn’t start feeling more natural to handle the exceptional cases of difficult words.
SureType Learns New Words
As seen above, SureType learns new words as you “show” them to SureType by backing up over its mistakes and typing forward with the correct spelling. New words are entered into your Custom Dictionary (found under Options). As well, SureType scans your incoming messages and adds any new words found there in your Custom Dictionary. So, any time you attempt to type one of the learned words, SureType will offer it to you as a choice at the appropriate time.
Conclusion
In our Tips and Tricks for Typing, Parts 2 and 3, we covered SureType and learned these things:
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The first trick is to learn to type without looking at the screen. The reason is to gain trust in SureType. This is an essential skill but not the only skill needed.
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Next, you learn that “difficult” or “unusual” words often require that you peek at the screen while typing to see if SureType is lost. If so, you learn to backspace until SureType has recovered and is back on track for the correct word. Then you resume typing until SureType gets it right.
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Everyone will develop her/his own style and methods for typing quickly and efficiently using SureType. There is no one right way, there is just your way. You will even discover tricks not covered in this necessarily brief tutorial.
To reinforce what you’ve learned here, and to pick up a few other pointers, view the BlackBerryPearl.com animated (Flash) SureType demo.
Lastly, practice your new skills by composing notes in MemoPad or by composing email messages. In time, SureType may become so natural to you that you don’t have to think to use it, you just let your fingers do the work while your mind is free to compose the words.
I hope you have come to appreciate, if not adore, SureType. Many people have abandoned the Pearl because they didn’t take the time to get to where you are now. What a loss! If, however, you are still struggling with SureType, please leave me a comment so that maybe I can improve this tutorial. Also, if you discover even better ways of using SureType, please leave those tips for me and others who pass by here.
32 comments on this post
I love the tutorials and blogs you write!
Only issue I have with this one, is the limit to 140 characters on the phone!!!!!! There have been so many times I’ve actually wanted to throw away the phone because by the time I get my thumbs goin’ I’m out of room!!!!
Nothing I hate more than having to break up a text message mid way through some really important sentence. I wish there was a way around this.
Chad,
Glad you like the blog. Makes me want to keep working hard on it.
The limit is actually 160 characters, and that limit is imposed by the SMS (text message) protocol, not the phone. You may have had a phone/provider that allowed you to compose longer texts and then broke it up into multiple text messages to observe the 160 character limit.
If your friends can send/receive pictures, then you can send them a message using MMS instead of SMS (you’ll see MMS in your menus for composing messages), then you do not have the 160 character limit. You don’t HAVE to send them a picture or video or sound–you can just send them a LOOOONG text message. That should solve your problem, again, IF your recipients have phones that send/receive pictures. Try it and let me know how that works for you (and them).
Kelly
Thanks for the great SMS/SureType tutorial. It really helps as a timesaver when I’m send text messages to know about the shortcuts you provided !!
160 characters is the universal limit, as Kelly stated. My last phone, the Moto Q did that, simply broke it up into 160 or less pieces and sent them out one by one. I wish our BlackBerry’s did that.
Kelly, your blog is the reason I bought a Pearl 8130 on Friday from Verizon. I did the software update using VMWare Fusion on my Mac.
SureType is great, but it confounds me when trying to type a username which has the first letter as lower case. It keeps switching it to upper case. I end up switching to MultiTap, and backspacing. Is there a secret to getting the first letter lower case in SureType?
Scott,
As you know, SureType automatically capitalizes when it thinks a word is the first in a sentence. To override that, I find that if I hold down the key so that it capitalizes, then backspace over it, and retype the same letter, it will stay lower case no matter what.
If I’m typing a username to log in, I don’t bother with that, as usually usernames are not case-sensitive, whereas passwords usually are.
Kelly
Great article. This will help a lot.
One quick tip I have since we’re talking about dictionaries. Once in awhile, you should check your custom dictionary and remove the entries it has for any mistyped words that might have snuck through. I go in there and I see a lot of garbage that got collected, so deleting them out will make your SureType work a little bit better.
Craig,
You’re absolutely right. One needs to clean out the Custom Dictionary occasionally. Errors get in there when you accidentally type a misspelled word and press SPACE or ENTER. It gets entered into the Custom Dictionary as if it’s a “real” word. Thanks for reminding us.
Kelly
Hi Kelly,
I purchased my Verizon pearl about two months ago and have problems with the units being super slow in unlocking, responding to any inputs and typing etc. I have also had the phone freeze up on me quite a few times. In addition I enabled the trash can or empty cache bin under the security settings on the phone and often times only a day or two later the phone reverts back to its default of not having that feature enabled..? The most two frustrating things for me was one I believe you just solved when I read your Q&A above which was the 160 character limit in texts but the second is on the pearl navigation ball itself, this is my second phone and the ball never reacts accurately or fluidly to up n down movement all the time always seems to get “stuck” not physically (although my 1st did) but the scroll wont scroll up or down… Last one, is there any PC based software I can download and the upload to the phone to make it perform better?
Thanks so much!
Rich
Rich,
Sluggish performance is usually a sign of low memory. That would include the trackball seeming to get stuck. You can check how much free memory you have by doing Options > Status, and reading the number for File Free. Opinions vary on how much you should try to keep free. 10MB (10000000) is what I have, and I have LOTS of apps installed. Some people insist on 15-20MB free. If you have a much smaller number than that, read my articles on memory problems. This topic is probably the single most important to understand to be happy with a BlackBerry.
Kelly
Kelly,
I have an 8120 and live in the UK.
Your site is excellent and I have enjoyed the SureType tutorials and yes I am still getting used to this way of typing after 2 months !!
Thanks
Mark
Mark,
Glad you’ve found the site helpful. I’m also glad you’re giving SureType a fair chance. Any ideas for my blog that might appeal to UK readers specifically?
Kelly
I am pretty frustrated with suretype. However, as you suggested in this blog, I am going to give it a try. I am a very fast typist, and this is just so different. I am even struggling setting up my email. I will get going. Thanks for the blog.
Carrie,
Everyone has to make her/his own choice. I’m glad you are willing to at least give SureType a try. There is a small percentage of time I switch to multitap because it just works better in some situations. Both methods are great inventions.
Kelly
Kelly -
Is there a hot-key combination to quickly switch between Sure Type and Multi Tap?? This would be useful in some situations where I am typing odd URLs or usernames, etc.
Thanks for the great blog!! I really enjoy reading your articles (and I read a lot of BB stuff all over the web). Your’s is some of the best!
Regards,
Pete Giancola
Rutland, Vermont USA
Peter,
There is no one-click way to switch between SureType and Multitap (although that would be great). But usually, if not always, you’re only TWO clicks away to do the switch. When in an entry mode, press Menu key and select Enable Multitap. Or the reverse switch.
Kelly
The one thing I hate about SureType is its problem in recognizing “get” from “hey”–they’re the same combination of buttons, and the phone never seems to know which one I want.
Melissa,
There are several word pairs like that, such as “are” and “see.” One way you can overcome that confusion is to use AutoText to define “hy” as “hey” (for example). So, when you type “hy”, you’ll get “hey” when you type ahead. Even saves you one key click.
Kelly
Thanks Kelly, this blog makes up a lot for the terrible documentation that came with the 8130. (For example, I was lucky that someone had posted here a list of supported file formats for the BB media player. The BB user guide only says “if your media doesn’t play, then its format isn’t supported”!)
Anyway, there’s also a second way of adding new words. For “gimble”, simply type out “humble” and click to accept the word, then go back to the letter “h” and you’ll be able to scroll down to “g”, and same for “u”/”i”.
This technique doesn’t work quite as well for the first-letter capitalization problem. For “twas”, you have to spell out “Twas”, then go back and enter a second “t” after the capital “t”, then delete the first one (alternately, type Ttwas and delete the first “t”). Unfortunately, this will also add garbage words to your custom dictionary, but during typing it’s a bit faster.
- RG>
RealGrouchy,
I appreciate the tips. Sometimes I know more than I write but struggle to keep it simple, but other times my readers know a lot more than I do, and teach me a lot. Together we’re a lot smarter than we are separate.
You gotta be kidding that the User Guide says “if your media doesn’t play, then its format isn’t supported.” I wonder if it also says, “If you try to call someone and the call doesn’t go through, that person can’t be called.” RIM is a great company, but they can do better than that!
Kelly
Kelly,
You the know the problems with the “Trooper Typing” Icon showing up on the desktop for Verizon users? I read through loads of blackberry forums and your blog trying to figure out what to do about it. It is, of course, a game that teaches one how to use SureType. I called Verizon about removing it and they said the only way to do it is to download the application, try it and then wipe it out. I haven’t yet tried this but was wondering if you figured out how to deal with it or had any updates.
Itinerantactivist,
I still don’t remember with total certainty how I deleted it. I’m 95% sure I did Options > Advanced Options > Applications, and deleted it there. But others say that doesn’t work for them. So, I don’t know what to say.
Kelly
POSTSCRIPT, 2008-07-27: I know more now. Please read my new article on Trooper Typing: http://newbbie.com/2008/07/27/trooper-typing-delete-itor-play-it/.
Thank you for doing what you do. I really like SureType and your tips make it rock! Your autotext suggestions resolved my biggest gripe with SureType. I now type ar and then space for the word are. And I type are and then space to get the word see. I took your advice about hy for hey.
I have learned a lot from your tips regarding sure type. It is a lot easier to type messages than what I was doing with the multi type function, like someone suggested I use. I do have a question regarding a symbol that keeps popping up on the Trooper Typing Game, whih I used for tying practice. It is { or } and I cannot find it on my blackberry pearl anywhere. Can you help?
I just posted a comment and have the wrong symbol listed. I am looking for a symbol that appears in the game Trooper Typing in level 8 and it looks like a bracket with three straight sides. It isn’t the symbols { or [ or ( but it is more like the second bracket with the tope and edges pointing up and down and they come in either left or right. It seems as if they made an error in the game as the Blackberry Pearls do not have such a symbol. I lose the game every time because of this. I may contact blackberry about it. If you have any suggestions, could you let me know. Thanks.
Sherry,
I haven’t played Trooper Typing enough to have seen that. It may be a strange font being used that alters a character that normally would be recognized. The only other characters I can think of that have a left and right version would be . If it’s not that (those), then maybe it’s a bug. Sounds like you’re very competitive and don’t like to lose, even to Trooper Typing. I like that!
Kelly
thanks for tips, I just switched from multi-tap to SureType because of you!
Robson,
Great! Thanks for letting me know. SureType is a very cool way of typing.
Kelly
Also note that you can switch to “Multi Tap” i.e. turn OFF the Suretype. I’ve done this in the Memo, by going to Menu and selecting Multi Tap. I hope this stays for email which I haven’t enabled yet.
thanks for the tips.
John,
Thanks for your comment.
Kelly
Thanks for convincing me to get the Pearl over the Curve ; )
Jeremy,
I’m glad to see the Pearl is still going strong.
Kelly
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