How to rapidly enter special characters, punctuation, and other keyboard shortcuts on your new iPad

This is an oldie but a goodie. Scratch that, greatie! Since your new iPad's keyboard is multitouch and not physical like a laptops, it can change and transform beneath your very fingertips. That means it can also do a bunch of really cool things to speed up your typing, like letting you more rapidly switch from letters to numbers or punctuation and back without hunting and pecking for the ABC and 123 buttons.

Here are some of our favorites:

• Tap the space bar twice to end a sentence with a period and start the next word with a capital letter.
• Touch the shift button and slide to a letter to capitalize it (faster than individually taping shift then the letter).
• Touch the 123 button and slide to the number or punctuation you want to enter, then let go to enter the number and immediately switch back to letter (ABC) mode.
• Touch and hold down a key to see variant characters. For example, hold down on "e" to see "è" "é" and more, or "$" to see
• Touch the exclamation point button (!) and flick up to quickly enter an apostrophe (')
• Type a double character at the end to auto-correct in contractions. For example, weree by default will autocorrect to we're, saving you from having to type the apostrophe.
• Put two fingers on the keyboard and pull them apart (like you do when you want to zoom in on a web page or photograph) to split the keyboard in two and make it easier for thumb-typing. (Pinch your fingers to bring the keyboard back together again).

While your new iPad keyboard might feel awkward at first, especially if you're a touch-typist on a physical keyboard. If you play around with it a little, however, you become pretty fast and efficient. Simply learn to trust your muscle memory and Apple's autocorrect.

• More new iPad tips, tricks, help, and how-tos