They can be more ornate than you'd expect, however: for a start, you can run multiple app-specific tasks in parallel, such as telling Chrome to search YouTube, IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes the moment you type in a movie keyword.

ENGADGET

"If you think about it, a keyword approach is going to miss a lot of subtleties if you just type in "photos, Katherine, " you might mean photos of Katherine, photos by Katherine, or photos Katherine is tagged in, " said Amy Campbell, a linguist at Facebook.

WSJ: The Future of Typing