How to type half consonants in Hindi

I wish I had known this since I spent about half an hour searching for a way to do it and so I want to put it down for someone else who might want the same thing.

Let's say you want to type in Hindi, the word "Hindi".

It is written as हिन्दी.

Now I was able to do that while writing this blog because Google blogger allows for transliteration (thanks Google!) that understands that there are words where a consonant (e.g. N "न" here) has to be written as a half-consonant combined with the "Di" (which is "न्दी"). Now this is pretty common practice while typing in Hindi and hence we come across many words like न्याय, शब्द, रत्न, etc. This type of shortening of a character is also called it's "Half-Form"

But how do you do that on windows when typing in say Notepad. Well, first of all the very fact that you are having this issue means that you are able to type in Hindi (Devnagri script) on your system. On windows system that means that you have some sort of language pack installed. But how do you type this "half-character".

The way you do it is this:
1. Type the consonant
2. Type a Halant character
3. Type the second consonant

Let me demonstrate this.

Let's say I want to type the word हिन्दी.

1. I start with हिन

2. Type a Halant. I have shown where it is on the keyboard using the Windows On-Screen-Keyboard (you can find it on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Ease of Access > On Screen Keyboard)

And my text becomes as shown below.

3. And then I type the द

And then the go on to complete the word

So now you all know how to type the half-forms.