Filed under: Tips and tricks, iPhone, iPod touch
Your iPhone and salty language
Some of you may have noticed that your iPhone or iPod touch is a bit prudish. Type a salty word and you'll likely be presented with a benign and completely inappropriate alternative (see screenshot at right). The problem (if you want to call it that) isn't that one can't swear, but that quickly-written sentences often have their meaning completely changed. Here's how you can knock your iPhone off of its moral high horse.While we haven't found a way for end users to easily add a word to the iPhone's dictionary, there's a great & NSFW post at T'N'T Luoma (be warned, there are saltier words than "hell" over there) describing a clever trick using your contacts list.
Of course, you could either click the little "x" to dismiss the suggestion or disable auto-correction completely (under OS 2.2), but what's the fun in that? We hope you find this trick handy. Just be careful when printing contact labels for your holiday cards.
Thanks TJ!
[via Daring Fireball]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jayson said 10:20AM on 12-07-2008
Hell is spelled with a capitol "H". If you start a word with a capitol, auto-correct ignores it's spelling. Just thought I'd point that out.
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Andre said 12:54PM on 12-07-2008
Capitol should be spelled with a capital C. You probably meant 'capital'. :)
Justin said 10:36AM on 12-07-2008
As a person who has his own website(s), I am having sympathy pains for the fact that you didn't link to the original site. Why not? Surely you must've looked at it, so why not link to it?
Anyways, this is the original site: http://tntluoma.com/iphone/ducking-iphone/
And I first read this story on Gizmodo two days ago (also not mentioned). Even gizmodo will link to tuaw if they get their postings from here with a "via tuaw" tag.
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Michael Rose said 10:41AM on 12-07-2008
Justin, what makes you think we didn't link to TJ's site? It's right there in the middle of Dave's post. Did you skip over it? Are your sympathy pains affecting your eyesight? You should maybe get that checked.
We don't credit every other site that posts an item, only where we see it first; in this case, John Gruber was the one who brought the story to light, so we acknowledge that in the [via] note at the bottom of the post. (I also saw the post on TJ's site before reading it at DF, but that's a side issue -- we weren't 100% sure we could tactfully discuss it here on TUAW, since we're a family-friendly site and all :-)
Justin said 12:28PM on 12-07-2008
Michael – I stand.. er.. sit.. corrected! (I'm truthfully trying to work on my arrogance, so thanks for setting me down a few pegs.) tuaw is still my favorite toilet-time site of choice.
But, to be sure, I actually do often skip the middle text to read the story from the original site; so when I didn't see TJ's site as the "read link", I was slightly surprised.
Anyone know a good surgeon? My foot got stuck in my mouth again :\
PSM said 10:50AM on 12-07-2008
This issue is so ducking annoying.
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Joshua said 11:04AM on 12-07-2008
That screen shot is because if you type any common contracted word it'll auto suggest the contracted form (ill to I'll, well to we'll, wed to we'd, cant to can't). Which does the average user type more often: hell or he'll?
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Macroy said 11:08AM on 12-07-2008
It depends on who the hell you ask.
Michael Rose said 11:24AM on 12-07-2008
Macroy, I am literally LOL right now. :-)
Adam said 2:38PM on 1-22-2009
Macroy, i seriously almost lost my composure in the middle of my finance class right now hahahahahaha
chris said 12:04PM on 12-07-2008
Hell that's funny!
www.gofrostfire.com
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Hawkman said 11:51AM on 12-07-2008
I've stopped correcting "ducking" now. I feel like a better person because of it? :)
Incidentally, I first saw this in a TUAW comment a couple of weeks before that post was written – but I guess noone picked up on it? http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/21/iphone-ipod-touch-update-2-2-walkthrough/2#commentlinks15725600-45030
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S. Hildebrandt said 12:58PM on 12-07-2008
Like most things in life, it all depends on which motherducking docksucker you listen to. Shut, I just do as the voices in my head instruct me.
Warmly from he'll
S Hildebrandt
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KRE8 said 4:32PM on 12-07-2008
I've found that as long as you x the wrong word, the dic will learn it after a few exes. My dic has wuttup, f***ing, etc. Just have to teach it like a child. But opposite, cause usually u teach kids not to swear.
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John Wallace said 6:11PM on 12-07-2008
This is interesting, because originally, it would help you swear. I believe there was a TUAW article about it in '07 sometime that described the auto-correct actually offering cursewords as corrections. I wonder who made that change.
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Kieran McIlwain said 7:37PM on 12-07-2008
Also, rather than having offensive words show up in your contact list you can simply add a contact of "Word Correction" and in the nickname fields list every swear-word you want to separated by a space.
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Godfrey said 5:22AM on 12-08-2008
I believe typing the same word for a few times would automatically add that word into the correction list. Try typing tuawistotallyawesome over and over again - it will "learn" that word after the third or fourth time and auto correct it for you (try typing tuawisaeesime, for example). It is also possible to override the built in corrections if you tried hard enough, as an experiment, I typed hell (and clicked the "x") for like 6 to 7 times and it stopped changing it to "he'll". Now if I typed "hrll" or "hekl", it will actually offer "hell" as the suggestion. (Warning: I don't really know how to change it back so don't try it unless you're fine with the consequences described here)
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Thom said 9:43PM on 12-11-2008
I have found that since updating to 2.2 my iphone has learned my... ahem, colorful language. I think they snuck in a better smart dictionary with the ability to turn it off.
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