Issues with Backspacing/Auto-Capitalizing

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Level 1

13 points

Issues with Backspacing/Auto-Capitalizing

I've been typing several things on my iPad using Pages and Notes, as well as occasionally in Safari and Mail, and I started to notice that when I held down backspace on the on-screen keyboard to erase things, it sometimes kicked in the Shift key when I finished, causing the next letter to be capitalized.

For example, if I wrote this sentence:

"The way she looked at the building made her think she'd been lost for some time, but no she knew she was where she needed to be."

Note that after the word but, I mistyped and have to put a w on the end to make it make sense. My natural instinct (with the lack of arrow keys) is to backspace to it, since the iPad's screen takes some precise movement of my large thumbs to hit juuuust the right spot after that no, or, even worse, in the middle of a word. So, I backspace and start typing, only for this to happen:

"but noW she knew..."

However, this isn't a replicatable issue. I can do that ten times and it might happen three of those times, so it's not a perfect issue.

Before, it was just an annoyance, a "Hey, that's weird, but let me go back and fix it" thing. However, now I'm writing a long work on it, typing on-the-go and in various places, so I can't always resort to my bluetooth keyboard to keep this issue from happening.

It feels completely random, too, since sometimes it hits in the middle of a word, at the beginning, or the end. I might erase 30 characters or 3 characters and it will do it sometimes.

It's gotten highly annoying, since it disturbs my thought process and slows my typing down to have to go back and fix these things. I've turned off Auto-Capitalization to see if that fixed it and it did not. Auto-Correct is off, at least until OS 5 and personal dictionaries can be put in to keep it from "fixing" my words.

So, in the end, how do I fix this? Or, even more important, am I the only one encountering this? It feels like a random bug, but it's highly annoying and keeping me from wanting to use my iPad at times because I get tired of dealing with this. Thanks to any help that can be offered.

iPad 2, iOS 4.3.2

Posted on Jun 26, 2011 9:23 AM

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Answer 1

JimHdk

Level 7

28,898 points

Jun 26, 2011 9:39 AM in response to Final Jump

I haven't seen that problem. It may be related to your use of the backspace key. I believe that the iPad will also capitalize new letters when they replace letters which were previously capitalized.

By the way, in positioning the cursor with your finger it is not necessary to place your finger exactly where the cursor should go. When you hold your finger on the screen a magnifying glass will appear which will allow you to slide the cursor around to where you want it. Magnifying the screen a bit before placing the cursor should also help.

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Answer 2

Final Jump Author

Level 1

13 points

Jun 26, 2011 9:51 AM in response to JimHdk

Yeah, I know about the auto-re-capitalize, that's why I included the sample sentences to show what I meant.

I've actually had it flip that, too: a letter that was meant to be capitalized, it would sometimes lowercase it, like this:

"She called him Noose, after a dog she had as a child."

But it's not supposed to be an N, so I backspace to change it and it does this:

"She called him moose, after..."

As for the magnifying glass, I know about that and that's what I meant, but it's...imprecise sometimes, since I have to hold on the spot and let it come up, then move my finger very carefully to hit the exact spot, which sometimes it reads my finger moving off the screen as a little bit of a roll to the left or right, so then I have to do it again. Arrow keys would help with that, to allow some preciseness, but that's not in the cards right now, so I use the backspace because it lets me be fairly precise and save time, especially if I'm just a word past where I need to fix, since I can erase and retype far faster than moving my hand and trying to hit just the right spot.

Thanks for the thoughts, though.

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