This is a quick tip for blackberry users who put smileys in their messages (more blackberry keyboard shortcuts here).
A normal smiley face is drawn with a : and a ). To do that on a Blackberry you need to hold down Alt and type H for the colon and and Y for the close bracket. That's Alt+hy (when you do that is SMS or Messenger your blackberry converts it to a proper smiley face).
It's a bit of a pain to use the alt key so here's a quicker way...
As "hy" is not a word you're ever likely to type you can add it to your custom AutoText so it's replaced by 
as soon as you hit space. Don't worry about about words like hypothesis, AutoText only works when you type hy followed by space. Here's how to add hy = to your AutoText.
1) Go to Options using the spanner/wrench icon.
2) Select AutoText from the Options screen:
3) Hit the menu key (the one that looks like the Blackberry logo, next to the green call key) and select New:
4) Fill in the fields as shown:
5) Hit the menu key again and hit save.
You can now make a smiley without breaking you stride.
This works equally well for other types of smiley. For example for a winking smiley face, you would set up AutoText to replace jy with 
.
Any AutoText settings you want to share with the world, let me know in the comments.
More Blackberry keyboard shortcuts here.
Tags: blackberry, guide, keyboard shortcuts, shortcuts, Technology
