Scrambled Editing in Messages on MacOS

My apologies if I misunderstood, but my follow-up question hadsto do with platforms, not with apps. I'm having trouble on my *Mac*, not my iPhone. There's no Settings app on the Mac and I don't think I can fix the problem by going into the Settings app on my phone – unless of course that's what you're recommending, that is, that I should change a setting on my phone to fix a problem on my computer.

The reason I think you're not suggesting this is because there's no Preferences app on a Mac, so it's not possible for me to follow the recommendation that I go to Settings > General > Keyboard.

If I've misunderstood – that is, if you're saying that the keyboard setting on my phone is affecting Messages on my computer – let me know and I'll give it a try. But I suspect it's simply a miscommunication and that the issue can't be fixed that way. Let me know.

Thanks again for your help with this.

After a couple weeks this appears to have solved the issue. I turned off all "Spelling and Grammar" and "Substitutions" functions and it worked flawlessly without trouble. Then I turned "Spelling and Grammar > Check Spelling While Typing" back on to have visual spell-checking and, interestingly, it returns to the behavior of occasionally flagging strings of text that aren't misspelled – usually four or five words together that clearly have normal spaces between them. These are the types of strings it was jumbling before and erroneous reshuffling in the message.

So by turning on spellcheck I'm able to have visual verification, but by leaving "Correct Spelling Automatically" off I don't have to fight the program when it goes haywire.

Just wanted to provide an update of where things stand. Thanks, Tom, for your help.

Thank you! I'll give it a shot. Thanks very much for the suggestion.

Thanks for the quick reply. I think the Settings app is part of iOS and this problem only affects the Messages app on my computer. Did I misunderstand your recommendation? Let me know.