This study looked at the way users enter alphabetic information on a standard, 12 key telephone. Twenty subjects entered names on the telephone keypad using the one keystroke per letter method. Subjects were not given instructions on how to enter the characters Q, Z and other punctuation which do not appear on the keypad. Data were collected on the keys chosen for these special characters, and for keypress errors and name entry times. The results do not indicate a clearly preferred entry method for Q, Z and hyphen, however, apostrophes were likely to be skipped (not entered) by the subjects.
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