iPhone miscorrecting "its"

Question

Level 1

8 points

iPhone miscorrecting "its"

Every time I type "its" in correct grammatical context (or in isolation, for that matter), my iPhone changes the word to "it's", making me look semi-literate when I fail to notice and correct this error. No matter how many times I type "its" and reject the suggested correction, the problem persists. Does anyone know how to overcome this?

Okay, perhaps "semi-literate" is overstating things, but this grammatical error is one of my personal pet peeves, so I find it a little humiliating when my iPhone forces the error upon me.

3GS, iOS 4

Posted on Jul 19, 2010 11:51 PM

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Answer 1

modular747

Level 6

19,656 points

Jul 20, 2010 12:07 AM in response to rhyme

The phone knows your irritation with this and it's deliberately taunting you with its autocorrection feature...

Just touch the small "x" at the corner of the replacement suggestion (before completing the word) and the dictionary will no longer make this suggestion. Alternatively, you can disable auto-correction completely

Settings > General > Keyboard > Auto-Correction > Off

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Answer 2

TaniaS

Level 1

9 points

Aug 22, 2010 2:30 PM in response to modular747

So far as I can tell, this is the lone auto-correct event that is impossible to train out of the iPhone. Even if you hit X a hundred times, it will always put the apostrophe back. With most mistakes, if you simply back up after the iPhone corrects you and retype what you meant, the phone will restrain from making the same suggestion again; it understands that you are correcting its correction. With "its" you can back up and retype a hundred times, and it will continue to put the apostrophe in if you don't hit the X. It seems programmed to treat this possessive pronoun as an unforgivable error. I am a professional writer and editor, and in my mind, the Apple aversion to "its" rivals the MS Word paperclip for intrusive AI non-help.

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