A new way to create neat lines and shapes

Jan 16, 2023 05:00 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has recently announced new inking improvements for OneNote on Windows users, this time supposed to make it incredibly easy to draw perfect lines and shapes.

Let’s be honest about it: while using a stylus is pretty straightforward, creating a perfect line or square is much harder than you expect, especially because a display doesn’t necessarily provide the same feel as a piece of paper.

Microsoft, however, has updated OneNote with behavior that comes in handy in this regard, allowing users to draw neat lines automatically.

The whole thing works as straightforwardly as possible, as users only need to create their own versions of the shape and then let OneNote convert it into a neater version.

Two ways to draw the perfect shapes

This happens automatically, and no further changes are required on the user side.

“Lines and shapes are everywhere when using ink to take notes, brainstorm ideas, or create content in OneNote. To create neater lines and shapes, you can now use the Draw and Hold gesture. Simply draw a line, arrow, or shape (like a circle, ellipse, triangle, square, rectangle, rhombus, pentagon, or hexagon) in a single stroke, hold your pen in place for a few milliseconds, and watch as the shape is converted into a neater version.  While still holding, you can drag to rotate or resize the shape,” Katie Sullivan, Product Manager on the Office Natural User Interface team, said.

In addition, Microsoft is also letting users draw straight lines from the very beginning by using a dedicated keyboard hotkey in OneNote.

“Another option you now have is a keyboard shortcut to create straight ink lines.  Press the Shift key and draw a line to automatically create a straight line between the starting point of your stroke and your cursor,” Sullivan explains.