OK, stop me if you know of a real-world implementation of what I’m looking for: Basically, the way paired special characters – such as () {} [] – are handled by keyboards on our smart devices (focus on texting, but writ large).

To the best of my knowledge, they are not handled in any way.

Just keep typing and switch from the alpha keyboard to the special character keyboard and back again.

Here is an example:

I start typing, then add a parenthetical comment. Word guesses appear to help speed the texting.

But what if, after I typed an opening special character – ( { [ – the close character then appeared in the text guesses bar? Like so:

And when I’m ready, I can hit the close parens from the text guesses, it disappears from that bar but is added to the text (without spaces, like word adds supply).

No flipping the special chars keyboard to enter: ). Just hit that character and keep typing.

I think this would be awesome.

Some refinements/issues:

• What if I never hit the close parens character? I guess it stays until the text is sent.
• Should other characters be treated like the parenthesis, curly bracket and square bracket? Perhaps the dash, as sentences like the following are common: “I like Georgia – the country – more than other former Soviet regions.” I would vote no, simply because the dash is often used alone: “Diner at 5 – don’t be late.”
• What happens when we have more than one open special character? First/last one wins? Both are shown? Example: “The First Lady ([Dr.] Jill Biden) spoke at the conference…” Not quite sure on this one. I guess keep the last, and when you use that one, the other reappears? – Because they are matching brackets, supposed to nest. I.e. “(aa {bb} )” not “(aa {bb) }.

Just some thoughts…and if this does become a thing, I can say I called it!