Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Productivity, Tips and tricks, iPhone
Misspelling is faster on the iPhone
I'm not sure that I quite agree with this in the wider scheme of things, but these examples are hard to argue with -- apparently it's easier and faster to just misspell words on your iPhone than to take the time to type them out in full. "We're," for example, is usually six hits on the iPhone's keyboard -- four for the letters, and one to shift to punctuation and another to punch in the apostrophe. But if you type "Weree," just five hits, Apple's little corrector will fix it for you, and you can keep on writing.Normally, the little corrections made by the iPhone are more frustrating than anything else, but in this case, it could be a benefit -- as long as you remember to misspell all the words with apostrophes while typing. Hopefully, any habits incurred while trying to save time on the iPhone won't translate into anything else you happen to write -- weree not responsible for any mistakes that might get made.
[via MacBytes]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
jinto said 8:12PM on 9-08-2008
They need word suggestion, not spellceck! Or maybe add suggestions to spellcheck. I'm my head I'm imagining combining the Windows Spellcheck with touch... it would work! Grumble... along with copy-paste...
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pete-01 said 8:17PM on 9-08-2008
for me, its correct 90%+ of the time when it auto-replaces a typo. having to x out the suggestion the other 10% of the time sucks, but its worth the trade-off.
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Jeff said 9:00PM on 9-08-2008
i seriously think i only x out the correction maybe 2% of the time, and even that might be a stretch. Very rarely do i ever need to x anything out - the auto-correct is a godsend.
there are just a few instances where i had to ADD a word i used commonly to the dictionary (i have a contact named "dictionary" with a nickname that means i never have to x out "ducking" ...but otherwise i think calling the auto-correct "frustrating" couldn't be farther from the truth.
Bender Bending Rodriguez said 8:22PM on 9-08-2008
While that is true, there is a trade off because there are words that try to default only to the wrong words which means you'll have to backspace to turn off the suggestion for that word.
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Shaun Andrews said 8:30PM on 9-08-2008
I thought this was the whole point of the iPhones smart keyboard. It just knows what your want to type. I never bother trying to spell words correctly. I just go about my business and type without worring about spelling things right—99% of the time it gets it right. I just aim for the approx. location of the key and it works. Isn't this how its supposed to be?
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Joshua Judd said 8:31PM on 9-08-2008
This is obvious. It should fast become apparent to anyone who uses an iPhone or iPod touch on a regular day-to-day basis.
Also, I believe Gruber blogged this long ago. I may be mistaken though, as I am too lazy to do any fact-checking.
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Graham said 12:39AM on 9-09-2008
Joshua,
They did blog on this before . The tip works with several contractions hell/he'll, its/it's. But it doesn't seem to work for ill/I'll, at least not on my phone.
Tony said 8:33PM on 9-08-2008
Neat tip.
The spelling corrupter is a real annoyance normally - for a completely contrived case try typing 'pc pc pc pc pc' and see how many keypresses it takes.
It's allegedly supposed to learn but I've never seen any evidence of it.
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Jordan said 8:41PM on 9-08-2008
I do believe this is a feature. On a blackberry you can modify the auto correction, but by default includes the same ones the iPhone does. I wish you could make custom auto corrected words on the iPhone
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spyker said 8:49PM on 9-08-2008
I can type really fast on my iPhone, but without autocorrect the sentences would be full of mistakes. The autocorrect is great!
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rawhead said 9:32PM on 9-08-2008
Like everybody else, I learned this pretty quickly. Especially useful are when I want apostrophes. I'll just skip the apostrophes and the iPhone gets it right most of the time.
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JediMasterJET said 10:44PM on 9-08-2008
I think the Auto correct feature works beautifully. Try just typing away a sentence and relaxing a little while you do it. don't hunt-n-peck. mine it right about 97% of the time (3% being names names and words I made up.) and when its wrong just reach your thumb up and inch and press the x.
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Jorge said 11:11PM on 9-08-2008
Try typing in spanish. That is hard.
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morbug said 11:15PM on 9-08-2008
I'm swedish, and since the virtual keyboard doesn't have the å ä ö-keys I need this feature is really useful. Instead of holding the a a o- keys and then select å, ä or ö I can simply write the characters a, a or o and the iPhone figures out what word I meant to write. The only problem is when I try to write english words in the middle of a swedish sentence. Oh well, nothing is perfect :)
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antiorario said 3:07AM on 9-09-2008
You can simply add the English keyboard from Preferences and switch keyboard on the go.
Aaron Davies said 11:35PM on 9-08-2008
re:carrying this over into normal typing, that reminds me of how i still handwrite t's and f's in Palm graffiti sometimes.
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Jason said 11:31PM on 9-08-2008
The autocorrect is awesome. I can pretty much just mash my hand in the general direction of the keys I want to hit, and it works. Especially handy for someone with big clumsy fingers.
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Matthew Heidenreich said 11:51PM on 9-08-2008
I.....hate... typing... **Shit**... it always corrects it to **Shot**... i mean, doesn't it know shits a word?
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apollo said 1:56AM on 9-09-2008
i know, i say duck all the time because of this fucking thing
TheMagnificen7 said 12:35AM on 9-09-2008
You guys are nuts. I love the keyboard, and rarely have to ignore a auto-completed word. And when I do, it learns for next time! I am typing incredibly quickly on my iPhone.
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