TUAW Tip: A better iPhone period trick
I just read about an iPhone typing tip from David Pogue (via John Gruber) that involves one solution to the alphabet/period conundrum: the period isn't included with the rest of the alphabet, so entering a period and moving on with another sentence is an aggravating process. Pogue's solution involves tapping and holding on the ".123" key (I left out the question mark since it doesn't play well with our blogging system), sliding your finger over to the period and then releasing - the trick here is that, if you do it right, the keyboard will switch back to the alphabet due to the way the keyboard registers and handles taps and key releases.
Personally, I find this really clunky, and I think I have an easier solution: simply press that ".123" key normally, type your period and then hit the space bar - the iPhone realizes you've just ended a sentence and are beginning another, so it automatically switches back to the alphabetical layout. This seems far more natural to me and easier to pull off in any kind of mobile or awkward situations.
[Update: It appears my trick works with any character on the punctuation/number keyboard layout: press the .123 button, hit a number or punctuation character, then press the space bar to switch the layout back to alphabetical. For some characters that typically have a letter after them, such as an apostrophe, the keyboard seems to switch itself back automatically without any interaction on the user's part; not even a space bar.]
