When you text, do you use a large on-screen keyboard, like one that fills the entire [typically] 6.5x3-inch smartphone screen, oriented horizontally like a physical keyboard? Or do you use small on-screen keybd, like the “default” one in Android phones?
On my phone, for shorter messages, I usually keep it portrait and use the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard to two-thumb it with autocomplete. It takes up about 40% of the bottom of the screen.
For any longer messages, I prefer to send and receive the texts on my computer instead, via Google Messages for Web. iPhones can do the same thing with iMessage.
I never type with the phone in landscape mode because I lose all my muscle memory.
Short to medium texts - vertical orientation, smaller keyboard, often with swearing and mistakes from my fat thumbs, one or two thumbs depending on length and how many things I’m juggling.
Anything longer than that, and it’s speech-to-text texting. If you’ve ever practiced careful enunciation - which does lead to slightly unnatural sounding speech, it’s quite accurate these days, and is so much faster than my fat thumbs dream of being. It’s also helpful if I’m responding to a text I that I reviewed from my smartwatch. Of course, it isn’t subtle, and not appropriate to all conversations, but at that point, I’ll generally find a place to do so in private, and/or call from a similarly secure area.
Vertical (sorry, @ParallelLines I so wanted to chose that way 
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I use Android’s swipe keyboard (phone held vertically) and the occasional tap typed word with the ‘words that start with’ options above the keyboard.
"Swipe-o’ mistakes force me to proofread everything, just in case.
I still miss the slide out physical keyboard on my old Motorola Droid 2.
Honestly, I almost exclusively use Google Messages for Web. My phone is locked up and inaccessible at work, and at home I’m pretty much always at the desktop or laptop. The times I need to send a text and I’m not at a computer are rare.
Same here. It’s a game-changer.
I still use the phone in vertical mode to text when out and about occasionally. If the text needs to be long(ish) then I use speech-to-text.
Agree with @ParallelLines .
I speak most of my texts. On your keyboard you should see a key with a microphone icon, like an old timey radio show microphone. Tap that and you should see a message at the top of the keyboard that says “speak now,” or “listening.” Dictate your message and text will appear just as though you had typed it. Be sure and proofread before sending. Also say period, comma, question mark, etc. Sooo much easier than typing.
I am another one that uses Google Messages for Web on my PC while at home. For messages written on the phone while I am out I use the phone held vertically. Having read the previous posts I may give speech to text a go.
I type a bunch on a laptop, a tablet an Iphone and an Android.
For ease of use, I go with the Android. They have shortcuts, swipe and the autocorrect is kinda sensible.
For me.
I use the small, portrait orientation keybord, never landscape. (And why just for texting? I do all of my internet posting from a phone, including here.)
I really only use speech-to-text when I’m at the wheel… but honestly, it’s really impressive. It’s definitely come a long way.
Vertical normal-sized keyboard on the bottom third of my iPhone.
The larger one cuts off a lot more of the text. This isnt the biggest deal with texts as they are often quite short. But it matters a lot when posting online, so my thumbs are already trained on that smaller keyboard.
I don’t actually have to look to type, as long as I keep the keyboard in my peripheral vision.
I agree 100% with proofreading.
I will say though, Google Messages on my Android phone does punctuation for me and it is pretty good at it. Certainly good enough for most texts. I can specify punctuation as you suggest but I do not need to.
Of course, different phones and apps may not do this. I do not know.
I hold my phone vertically and mostly use one thumb. I selected a phone where I can comfortably get to all keys that way. I do use the suggested words quite often.
I switched the default keyboard for Gboard, which enables me to have two languages going at once as I often need to aussi texter en français.
Same. I rarely haul out the laptop for something complicated, like lots of links. But mostly i type on my phone. I use the Google keyboard and mostly swype. I also progress, but I’m a little dislexic, and don’t always catch errors (especially auto-correct errors, which seen to be added with a small delay.)
I find it unusable in landscape mode, as the keyboard covers the nearly the whole screen and i can’t see what I’m doing. Also, it’s hard to hold with one hand, and the letters are too far apart.
That’s why i never really adapted to tablets. The letters are too close for touch typing, and there’s no tactile feedback. But they are too far apart to swype. I find typing on a tablet painful.
Typing on an on-screen keyboard on a tablet is indeed torture. As is pecking at a phone.
Using a landscape format tablet with a full sized laptop-equivalent keyboard is great. But isn’t the topic of the thread.
How do I text? Painfully.
Android, standard keyboard, portrait orientation, hold phone in left hand and peck with right index finger. Missing about 1 out of 5 keys by hitting too high or low. So “about now” comes out like “a outnnnow”. Spell check cannot begin to correct those errors and it’s hard to accurately reposition the typing cursor to fix them later. (Yes, I know about the press and hold to enable 2D cursor dragging. Still annoying as fuck.)
Since I can’t hit the target with my most dexterous index finger I genuinely can’t understand how anyone can type on that tiny keyboard with two thumbs, each pad of which covers about 6 keys when it makes contact.
I find it pretty easy. I’m left handed, so i swype with my left index finger. Back when i had a BlackBerry with physical keys, i typed with both thumbs.
Vertical, android phone, swipe to type. I’ve gotten good enough at swiping that I can swipe text much, much faster than typing, and about as fast as speaking, including punctuation.