Autocorrect seems to have a mind of its own
Oh, autocorrect! Sometimes, you’re so handy. You see the word “brain” and know I meant “Brian.” You instantly switch letters around, turning nonsense into coherent words. You complete me — or, more accurately, you complete my sentences.
So why do you have to drive me so crazy? Why do you take the words I intended to type and completely rearrange them? Why must you turn “Missy” into “Mossy,” or “so” into “do,” or “well” into “we’ll”? Why can’t you accept the things I type into that tiny keyboard, except when I obviously intended something else?
Most autocorrect errors are funny, like a digital Mad Libs. But sometimes we send messages without realizing how embarrassing they are.
Here’s the good news: You have a lot of power over the autocorrect feature on your iOS Phone.
After all, your phone is trying to learn from There are several tactics you can use to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
TURN OFF AUTOCORRECT Yes, you can just turn it off. Autocorrect may seem like a permanent fixture, but you can disable it whenever you like. No more bad guesses. No more awkward miscommunications. You simply type what you mean, letter by letter, and if something is misspelled, so be it.
Turning it off is pretty simple. Just tap Settings, General, Keyboard, then toggle Auto-Correction to Off. Follow the same steps to turn autocorrect back on whenever you need it again.
RESET YOUR KEYBOARD DICTIONARY Deep inside your phone, there is a tiny dictionary. This verbal database determines whether your words are spelled correctly, and everything you type is checked against this list. But the more you use your phone, the more you may accidentally save words to the dictionary that aren’t correct. Over time, these misspellings can add up, meaning more frustration for you.
Luckily, you can essentially “reboot” your keyboard’s dictionary. Just go to Settings, General, Reset, then Reset Keyboard Dictionary. Once you’ve done this, your dictionary is a clean slate, the same as when you first
TRAIN AS YOU GO When you misspell a word in iOS, autocorrect usually jumps in with the correct spelling. It can also fill in words it recognizes before you fully type them. Just hit the spacebar or tap your finger on the word to accept the autocorrect suggestion.
But this can also be frustrating. You’ve probably done this a thousand times: iOS guesses the wrong word, over and over. By the time you’ve typed the full word “marginal,” iOS has already guessed “My,” “Maybe,” “Man,” “Mary,” “Maria,” “Math,” “Marge,” “Margi,” “Margo,” “Margin,” “Margins,” “Marginally” and “Marginalized.” If you hit one of these guesses by accident, you have to delete letters and go back. Meanwhile, iOS may think it’s guessing correctly, especially if you accidently press the spacebar. This will cause autocorrect to learn from a mistake, which could cause problems later on. To counter this, start typing your word, and when autocorrect guesses the wrong word, tap the X in the autocorrect bubble and override the suggestion. This slows you down a little at first, but iOS will learn your preferences very quickly and will stop suggesting it. TEXT REPLACEMENT If you’re feeling ambitious, you can program your phone to replace one phrase with another. These shortcuts can be very handy and save you a lot of typing time.
Here’s a typical example: You want to say “on my way,” but instead you type “OMW.” With one little trick, your phone can automatically turn “OMW” into “On my way.” Or you can turn “BRB” into “Be right back,” or “1234” into “Four Score and Seven Years Ago.” Anything you feel like.
Here’s what you do: Go to Settings, General, Keyboard, Text Replacement, Tap the + sign. Here, you add the complete sentence to the Phrase field, in this case “On my way.” In the Shortcut field, you put “OMW.”
On the flip side, if you leave the Shortcut field blank, then autocorrect will stop trying to correct the spelling of that word or phrase. From now on, you can type that word and autocorrect theoretically should ignore it.
TURN OFF PREDICTIVE TEXT As you type, you’ll notice words popping up between the keyboard and the text. This feature is called “predictive text,” because your phone is trying to guess the next word you want to type. Because your phone learns from your vocabulary, predictive text should become more accurate as time goes on.
But the opposite is also true: When you make mistakes, predictive text starts guessing incorrectly because it is using incorrect data to anticipate your word choice. One nice thing about predictive text is that you can easily toggle while typing to turn it on and off.
Here’s how you do it: Open the Messenger app, press and hold the keyboard button (where you enable your emojis) and toggle on (or off ) the “Predictive” option.
Alternatively, in iOS 10, go to Settings, General, Keyboard, then toggle the “Predictive” option to Off.