Speed Writing On A Palm

Q. On a recent airplane trip I noticed a woman writing on her Palm with unusual speed. Her stylus never seemed to move away from the Graffiti writing area to evoke commands. What’s the secret?

A. The Graffiti menu command truly accelerates the Graffiti writing process.

To evoke the menu command, draw a diagonal line in the abc (letters) area from the lower left corner to the upper right corner and then write a single letter related to a specific command (such as C for copy). Here are the commands; the / (slash) character means you must draw the diagonal line first:

/C = copy
/X = cut
/P = paste
/D = delete
/U = undo
/B = beam
/L = address

The Palm 3.5 operating system adds another little convenience: When you evoke the menu command without a letter, a graphical window with icons appears at the bottom of the screen for three seconds. You can tap on the icons to take advantage of those built-in functions.