# My phone finally figured out I use the word "just" more than I use the word "Judy". **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 5, 2014, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537 "2014-09-05T01:57:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2014, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/41 "2014-09-06T17:58:41Z")
> [@Renee](#): > > My iphone for some reason thinks I type proper French names a lot. I know no French people. I know no French. I’ve never tried to learn French. Why would you autocorrect random misspellings to French surnames? Trust your phone. You apparently need to meet some French folks and learn some basic phrases. Comment allez-vous? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2014, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/42 "2014-09-06T18:01:48Z")
Your phone Judy now figured that out? ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2014, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/43 "2014-09-06T19:34:28Z")
My phone recently (about 3 mos ago) decided I must mean Ares (the Greek god of war) instead of the wore are (present tense of the verb “to be”. My sentences end up looking like, “You Ares going to stop by the market on your way home?” “Karina and James Ares going to cover the shift on Monday.” I am also getting toy quite often instead of you. “Ares toy going to the market?” ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/44 "2014-09-07T03:15:57Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > Is it simple to pick up a book in a foreign language and teach yourself to read it? Language is hard. It’s big, complicated, and full of exceptions. Computers, in particular, find that last bit difficult. > > Sophisticated autocorrects and autocompletes don’t just keep word counts. They track relationships between words as well. It’s how they offer suggestions before you even start typing the next word. A lot of that information is pre-populated by common usage statistics across lots of people. So, if you type “i”, it probably knows enough to offer “I” as an option, and once you select it, it offers a list of words it thinks are often associated with “I”–“am”, “have”, “will”, and so forth. That’s well and good until you have some reason to text about _I, Claudius_. The general usage stats are weighted enough that you would have to type that title in an awful lot before the phone starts assuming that “I” should always be followed with a comma, fortunately, but that’s also why it takes a lot of use for it to adjust to things you personally type often. > > Things that don’t get used much in common texting don’t have as much statistical weight behind their associations, so they tend to be picked up faster by the software. Which is why my phone is now convinced that spiders eat bread. None of this is anything I don’t know. But it doesn’t explain why a relatively uncommon name is prioritized above a common word such as “just.” Even if it’s based on context, that context should still be using usage information, and I can think of few sentences where you can replace “just” with “Judy” and have it still make sense. I’m not saying it isn’t a hard problem, but it seems to be one that was solved long ago but it still horrible on phones.It sure doesn’t feel like they are using real usage data. TTY is a tech abbreviation no one uses, yet the word “the” is the single most popular word in the English language. “Butter” is a much more popular word than “buttress,” and probably comes up on shopping lists a lot. “Peanut buttress” never even happens, so it’s not a failed prediction. The only example in this thread that made sense was the lack of “its,” because I can see that word actually being uncommon. But that’s also why spell correct has an “add a word” feature. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Mondegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/91b2a8/32.png) [@Lord\_Mondegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Mondegreen)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/45 "2014-09-07T04:38:48Z")
On my iPhone, if I type “breas” it immediately offers “bread” as a correction. Apparently I’m so boring it thinks I’m much more likely to be writing a shopping list that includes bread, rather than writing about breasts. Unfortunately it’s right. ---
**Author:** ![Randolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Randolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randolph)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/46 "2014-09-07T05:29:15Z")
For a while, out of the blue, my Swype started seriously preferring the oft-used ‘Juju’ over the lesser-known ‘I’. So Juju sounded like a trained monkey talking about himself in the third person every time Juju sent a text. You know what Juju mean? Juju actually had to delete it from the dictionary to get it to stop. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/47 "2014-09-07T11:50:49Z")
> [@bienville](#): > > I don’t even know anyone named Judy. Check if the word Judy appears anywhere in your contacts (use the search feature). iOS autocorrect uses names from contacts, including company names. Worst case, there’s Settings / General / Reset / Reset Keyboard Dictionary. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/48 "2014-09-07T12:50:13Z")
> [@Renee](#): > > My iphone for some reason thinks I type proper French names a lot. I know no French people. I know no French. I’ve never tried to learn French. Why would you autocorrect random misspellings to French surnames? _Très intéressant_ username-post combo. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/49 "2014-09-07T14:30:01Z")
> [@gregorio](#): > > And can we just forget about ducking? One would think one’s phone would figure out that one doesn’t say “ducking” very often. Also, “shot” doesn’t actually come up in my conversations. And can we please stop autocorrecting appropriate “its” to “it’s”??? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/50 "2014-09-07T16:07:37Z")
My son reprogrammed my wife’s phone so it would autocorrect “ok” to “firefarts”. Hilarity ensued. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/51 "2014-09-07T20:06:33Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > And can we please stop autocorrecting appropriate “its” to “it’s”??? This x 1000. Let me decide if I mean “it’s” or “its”. I shouldn’t have to X out the autosuggestion for “it’s”. And I know I can turn off autosuggestion, but it’s useful in putting apostrophes in contractions, for one thing. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2014, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/52 "2014-09-07T20:49:59Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > None of this is anything I don’t know. But it doesn’t explain why a relatively uncommon name is prioritized above a common word such as “just.” Even if it’s based on context, that context should still be using usage information, and I can think of few sentences where you can replace “just” with “Judy” and have it still make sense. The context it uses isn’t necessarily sentence context, though it does seem to learn some phrases. It mostly uses nearby words in the current message, I think. As to “just” and “Judy” specifically…beats me. At a guess, outside of certain phrases, neither word is common enough in messages for the software to have a preference, and the recognizable constructions involving “just” tend to start with the word, so the phone doesn’t have that to go on. It may be picking something from a contact list (as **tellyworth** suggested) or even picking from a word list in alphabetical order. Or it could just be something goofy in the prepopulated data. Missing weighting info, swapped numbers, what have you. It happens. That’s one reason why it’s designed to learn from the stuff you put into it. (Unfortunately, that means every time someone fails to catch a mistaken “correction”, it reinforces it.) > [@](#): > > I’m not saying it isn’t a hard problem, but it seems to be one that was solved long ago but it still horrible on phones. It’s far from solved, but we can fake it better on machines with relatively large amounts of memory and power. Phones are far more capable than they used to be, but they’re still under tighter constraints than a full-size computer (and even those still screw up autocorrects quite a bit, but it doesn’t come up as often because the software is less active on machines with full keyboards.) ---
**Author:** ![BaldDudePeekskill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5e925/32.png) [@BaldDudePeekskill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BaldDudePeekskill)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/53 "2014-09-08T11:29:48Z")
Swype has apparently been reprogrammed…I found the earlier version to be much more intuitive. Also, I’ve taken to deleting the ridiculous words it seems to think I commonly used, but do not (prime example being Thee and Thou)…in the hope that it’ll catch on. I wish I could revert to the earlier version…and to confuse me even more, I have an Android phone with Swype and the iPad that I use constantly,a and their conventions are so different… Well it beats the days of texting with a flip phone, I suppose ---
**Author:** ![yourstrulykatie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/dc4da7/32.png) [@yourstrulykatie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yourstrulykatie)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/54 "2014-09-08T16:58:47Z")
My phone seems to think any time I type “gave” I must mean have. I understand that the H & G are right next to each other, but I figure autocorrect is smart enoug to use context clues & see from the words I’m using before it that I’m trying to write gave! When I type that word 99% of the time it’ll autocorrect itself & it drives me insane. I almost always have to go back and fix it. ---
**Author:** ![Karen\_Lingel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karen_lingel/32/18649_2.png) [@Karen\_Lingel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_Lingel)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/55 "2014-09-08T17:54:08Z")
> [@Randolph](#): > > For a while, out of the blue, my Swype started seriously preferring the oft-used ‘Juju’ over the lesser-known ‘I’. So Juju sounded like a trained monkey talking about himself in the third person every time Juju sent a text. You know what Juju mean? Juju actually had to delete it from the dictionary to get it to stop. It is not yet noon, but I know this is the funniest thing I am going to read all day. LOLOL! ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/56 "2014-09-08T23:17:39Z")
> [@yourstrulykatie](#): > > My phone seems to think any time I type “gave” I must mean have. I understand that the H & G are right next to each other, but I figure autocorrect is smart enoug to use context clues & see from the words I’m using before it that I’m trying to write gave! When I type that word 99% of the time it’ll autocorrect itself & it drives me insane. I almost always have to go back and fix it. It didn’t correct “enoug,” either. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537/57 "2014-09-12T23:14:45Z")
Just had another utterly absurd fill in suggestion. Starts with c-r-o, used in the phrase "as the ----- flies. Yep you guessed it, “Krov” WTF(or whoTF) is a Krov? Even if it doesn’t like birds, how about “crowd” or “cromulent”(which I have typed a few times). Firefox browser doesn’t like it much hehe, maybe I can figure out a way to have it tutor my phone in English. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-phone-finally-figured-out-i-use-the-word-just-more-than-i-use-the-word-judy/697537.md?page=2)