Where Is the Missing Comma On My iPhone Keyboard?

If you are using the iPhone's virtual keyboard and can't find the comma key, there are a few reasons why.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Can't find the comma in your iPhone's keyboard? Let me show you why. 
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So if you can't find the comma on your iPhone's keyboard you're not alone. If you look online there are a lot of people that say they have this problem. There are also a lot of articles and even videos to try to explain why. But they don't seem to be helping people because there are actually several different reasons why people may not find the comma on the iPhone's keyboard and usually the one that most people are experiencing is not the solution that's being presented. Let me show you all the different reasons why you may not see the comma and either how to find it or why you don't need it.
First, say you're typing in a normal app. Like here I am in the Notes app. I've got my keyboard at the bottom and notice that there's no comma key that's visible. Now in order to get to the comma what you would normally do is tap a little 123 button here at the bottom left. When you do that you get the Numbers & Symbols keyboard. One of the keys here is the comma. So now you can type the comma pretty easily. Now if this was your problem you simply didn't know to press the 123 key here to reveal the comma. Now you know the solution. But chances are that's not why you're asking. You probably already knew how to type a comma like this when typing normal text. 
Now do note that what I'm using here is the US English keyboard. So one possible problem is that maybe you're not using the US English keyboard. Now no matter which keyboard you're using there should be a comma available to you as long as that is a regular character used in that language. But note there are several settings that change which keyboard is here. You've got this little Globe Key at the bottom left and if you tap it it will switch keyboards. If you tap and hold it will show you the keyboards you've got. In this case I've got English, Emoji keyboard, and the French keyboard that I have enabled. You can easily switch between these. So it could be that you've switched to a keyboard that doesn't have the comma key or it's not in the location where you expect. 
If you go to Keyboard Settings it actually jumps to the Settings App and right to the keyboard section. Here you can see the keyboards I have installed. So you can see maybe you've got a different keyboard installed and maybe you're using the wrong one in this situation and you can figure out why the comma is missing based on that. 
Note not only do you have keyboard settings here but if you go up to the Main level, down into General you also have an area here for Language & Region. So depending on your settings here you may also see different things on the keyboard. 
Now if that doesn't help you find the comma on your keyboard, well I'm not too surprised because that is probably not the reason why you can't find it either. It is definitely something you should keep in mind but chances are the problem you're experiencing is this. You are in either the Mail App, Messages App, or something similar where you're sending a message to someone. 
Let's go into the Mail App here. Say I'm composing a new message. Now the important thing to realize about the keyboard is the keyboard is dynamic. It changes depending on the situation. So you're going to see different keyboards, maybe just slightly different keyboards, depending upon the app you're using and where you're typing. For instance here in the Mail App I'm going to see a different keyboard if I'm in the To field adding addresses here or if I'm in the Body Field here where I'm typing. Using the Body Field I get a keyboard that looks just like the on in Notes. I get all the regular letters here and if I tap 123 I can see the comma. But if I'm typing in the To Field here then note that the keyboard changes a bit. For instance, notice that I have an At symbol that is not usually there in the standard keyboard. You have to tap the 123 to see the At symbol. But it is here when you're typing email addresses because, of course, every email address has to have that At symbol in it. So it makes sense to put it in a location where you can get to it easily. But if I tap 123 I can see the numbers here at the top but the symbols I see are different and it is missing the comma. So there is no way to type a comma here if you're typing an email address up here in the To field. This makes sense because a comma is not an accepted character in an email address. This isn't a restriction of the Mail App. This isn't a restriction of your iPhone. This is a restriction of the internet. Email addresses cannot have certain characters. One of the characters they can't have is a comma. There is no such thing as a comma in an email address. So when you type an email address you don't need a comma. You can type one out, like this, and you'll never need to type a comma in an email address. 
But wait! I know why it is that you want to use a comma. It's because you want to have more than one email address here. Typically on a computer, using a regular physical keyboard, you would type one email address, press comma, and then type another email address. You can't do that here because there is no comma. But you don't need a comma because you don't need to separate email addresses with commas here. Instead you could just use the Return Button here. If you tap Return you may think it would enter the email address and then maybe go to the next field. But it doesn't. Return will finish off that email address and then you can see I'm still typing and I can type another email address now. So you can enter one email address, return, another email address, return, and so on until you have all the email addresses that you want in the To field. You also, of course, could use the Plus button here and add email messages this way. So I can add this one here, for example, and you can see it adds it without even using Return, or comma, or anything. 
So when typing in the To field you can't type a comma and you don't need to type a comma because Return will separate email addresses. 
The same thing in Messages. If you start a new message conversation there and you type something here. I'll just use somebody's name, and then use that you could see I just go and immediately start typing somebody else's name. If I'm actually typing something like a phone number, like that, I don't need a comma there either. A Return will finish off that phone number and I can start entering the next phone number. So just like Mail you don't need a comma to separate these and you can't use a comma in either an email address or a phone number anyway. So there is no need to have it present in the keyboard.
So they are the three reasons why you can't find the comma key in the iPhone keyboard. Either you forgot you need to press the 123 button to get to the Numbers & Symbols part of the keyboard or perhaps you're using a specialty keyboard, maybe a third party keyboard or just a different language keyboard where the comma is in a different location or maybe not part of that particular language. 
Or you're simply typing in a space, like the To field in the Mail App or the Messages App where the comma isn't even allowed or needed.
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Where Is the Missing Comma On My iPhone Keyboard?”

Mark

9 months ago

Thanks for your thorough but simple explanation. Again and again you give great information. Well done.

Rob

While I haven't experienced the comma key issue, this was still a great explanation to me as to how the dynamic keyboards work

Christian Nelson

As always, great information presented clearly and correctly. Thanks, Gary.

Where Is the Missing Comma On My iPhone Keyboard?

Comments: 3 Responses to “Where Is the Missing Comma On My iPhone Keyboard?”

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