Note-taking: S-pen weirdness.

[wm4]

Love me some S-pen.

Old guy, never gonna develop the thumb-fu younger users have with cell phone keyboarding, but the S-pen has been a godsend. Permits blinding & dextrous entry, tapping out text messages like a Resistance telegrapher speedkeying latenight dispatches in a Paris garret before the Nazis can triangulate him.

But...go quickly enough, characters appear with a space between: l i k e t h i s . Which reads like 'Ludes.

Disconcerting, eh? So is this an unwanted spillover by-product of the "air" function? Or what?

 

[Brew Swayne]

I've never had a problem with s-pen putting spaces between letters because I was writing too quickly, only if I'm not writing fast enough. That said, I think it's safe to say that the technology that goes into this is still a long ways away from being perfected, so there's going to be a lot of hiccups along the way that disrupt the fluidity of writing.

Have you tried using voice commands for sending text messages or emails? Personally, that's my preferred method...although I don't recommend it when you're out in public.

If you're not familiar with voice commands on your phone, read this.

 

[wm4]

Ah, yes; voice-to-text.

Not for laggards, though, or hesitation; you must have your thought fully formed, ready to speak, and it'd better be short. As you would to a dog: "Fetch, Blackie, fetch", or at most, as a Noncom would dictate - "Rrright showlda, Hawms!". Without the punctuation. Not for soliloquies. Try; it cuts off your water.

Gets annoying, t h e g o i n g b a c k a n d r e m o v i n g a l l t h e b l a n k s p a c e s, eh?

 

[Brew Swayne]

Lol, yeah, it definitely helps to know what you want to say. Brevity can be your friend. But like anything else, you get better with practice.

Punctuation is easy to add though, you just have to speak the punctuation mark as you're dictating the message.

Can you pick up milk?

Can you pick up milk question mark.

 

[wm4]

Well, on my (new) Note 4, speaking punctuation ain't easy. Voice-to-Text app knows no punctuation, voice-to-text app speaks Choctaw.

Saying "question mark" or "exclamation point" gets you nothing, gets you air, gets you a blank space.

O, But let it go, let it go, as Twain would say. As you point out, it's relatively early days for voice.

Autogenerated blank space between typed (albeit swiftly 'typed' with a pen) characters is a whole 'nother smoke. Maybe the answer is less caffeine, a slower draw on the stylus.

 

[wm4]

Ok, I take it back.

About the spoken-punctuation, that is. Tried it again, speaking more slowly this time ("Hi period This is a test period Did it work question mark"). It worked. Maybe v-to-t is getting used to me, as Google says it will.

Apparently, I not only "type" too fast, but talk too fast as well. Speaking this slowly sounds like the aforementioned underwater, Methaqualone-speak to my ear.

Waal...Guess...I...orter...learn...to...mosey...