# The new iPhone software's best new feature. No more autocorrect to "ducking". This thread is also about your best autocorrect stories **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 6, 2023, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122 "2023-06-06T21:55:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/1 "2023-06-06T21:55:09Z")
Imagine all of the time saved. > **[About ducking time: Apple to tweak iPhone autocorrect function](https://www.reuters.com/technology/about-ducking-time-apple-tweak-iphone-autocorrect-function-2023-06-05/)** > > One of the most notable happenings at Apple's event for developers on Monday is likely the iPhone maker's tweak that will keep its autocorrect feature from annoyingly correcting one of the most common expletives to "ducking." ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/2 "2023-06-06T22:04:51Z")
My iPhone often thinks I’m in France. Or Quebec. Even when I’ve set it to English. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/3 "2023-06-06T22:12:25Z")
Autocorrect is my worst enema. ---
**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:** [June 6, 2023, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/4 "2023-06-06T22:45:26Z")
I understand why it happens. And I’ve always suggested a way around it. The reason it happens is that people don’t tend to want any word that isn’t a expletive autocorrected into one. Hence there is an option to prevent this. However, the way this is implemented is to not have the expletives in the main spelling dictionary. They are just in an option one which can be disabled or enabled. That works, as it can’t autocorrect to a word it doesn’t know. But it also means that it assumes expletives are misspelled words, and thus may offer to correct them. The solution then, IMO, is to implement a set of words that are considered spelled correctly, but will never be used to autocorrect a misspelled word. And that’s where you put the expletives. That said, if it “learns from you,” I doubt Apple is using this method. Maybe it just figures out that, if you constantly undo an autocorrect (or edit it back) on a particular word, then it should not keep autocorrecting that word. Heck, maybe it could lean from how you edit it. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/5 "2023-06-06T22:50:36Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The solution then, IMO, is to implement a set of words that are considered spelled correctly, but will never be used to autocorrect a misspelled word. And that’s where you put the expletives. Exactly. > [@BigT](#): > > That said, if it “learns from you,” I doubt Apple is using this method. Maybe it just figures out that, if you constantly undo an autocorrect (or edit it back) on a particular word, then it should not keep autocorrecting that word. Heck, maybe it could lean from how you edit it. I think that there is that, like it knows my weird last name and doesn’t correct that. Maybe it grabs “good” words from my address book though because it will suggest last names of friends that I have never typed. I wonder what would happen if I made an address book entry for John Fucking. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/6 "2023-06-06T22:54:53Z")
I’m not going to put the exact autocorrect in here because it was so specific that if people who know me read this thread it would identify me. But suffice to say that in a message to a new and important client autocorrect changed her name to something roughly equivalent to “garbage”. Luckily she had a sense of humour. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/7 "2023-06-06T23:24:03Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > I think that there is that, like it knows my weird last name and doesn’t correct that. Maybe it grabs “good” words from my address book though because it will suggest last names of friends that I have never typed. Most autocorrect systems now read your contacts and add everybody’s name and sometimes their company to your local dictionary. Which is great until someone or something has a name that’s “near” a common typo so they suck up all your typos instead of the actually correct word. Spellcheck in 2023 should not be a list of known words. It should be a list of bad → good word _pairs_. Which should be fully editable to both add and remove entries. With auto-learned combinations available separately to flag as “mistake: never use and never ‘learn’ again.” Why yes this crappily implemented garbage pisses me off no end. How did you know? ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/8 "2023-06-07T00:10:25Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The solution then, IMO, is to implement a set of words that are considered spelled correctly, but will never be used to autocorrect a misspelled word. And that’s where you put the expletives. > > That said, if it “learns from you,” I doubt Apple is using this method. It does both. There is a static dictionary that’s a “real” dictionary, and then a dynamic dictionary that is made up of the custom words (shizzle, yolo, fomo) you frequently use that it learns from you. The static dictionary includes a list of naughty words that it will never help to autocorrect if you misspell them, hence a lot of ducking around. But I guess now that’s being changed (or supplemented) by adding a transformer language model when you’re typing which probably means Apple feels confident enough that it can tell by the context of what you’ve typed that, yes, you really meant “fuck” instead of “duck.” I look forward to all the clickbait articles about how the new model fucked up. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/9 "2023-06-07T00:13:44Z")
It should never ever correct _to_ fuck in any circumstance but it should definitely leave it be for potty mouths like me. Maybe only if I am ordering Peking Fuck from a restaurant. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/10 "2023-06-07T00:28:16Z")
If you spell it correctly, it should leave it alone. Or at least that’s what it’s supposed to do. Does it not do that for you? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/11 "2023-06-07T16:22:51Z")
Not historically. And that’s the problem. Historically they did not have a way to distinguish between “this word ‘fuck’ is spelled correctly” and “this word ‘fuck’ is a perfectly good word to correct similar-looking unrecognized words like ‘guck’ or ‘Fuch’ _to_.” So to avoid making the latter mistake, they had to leave “fuck” out of the list of correctly spelled words. Which had the side effect that when you did intend to write “fuck” and spelled it correctly, the spellchecker considered it unrecognized and hence misspelled and often changed it to “duck”. Supposedly this is fixed by them now being able to separate the two ideas of “is correct” and “is an acceptable correction”. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/12 "2023-06-07T23:56:58Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > So to avoid making the latter mistake, they had to leave “fuck” out of the list of correctly spelled words. Which had the side effect that when you did intend to write “fuck” and spelled it correctly, the spellchecker considered it unrecognized and hence misspelled and often changed it to “duck”. No, that is not true. There is a list of curse words in the dictionary, it just won’t autocorrect to those curse words if you misspell a curse word. If you spell “fuck” correctly, it won’t autocorrect it to “duck.” adding it’s possible that if you misspell “fuck” 3 or 4 times after first using your iOS device and accept the “duck” autocorrect, then it learns that you did mean duck. But that’s because you misspelled it and accepted the correction. You can reset that, but out of the box, the keyboard knows bad words and won’t correct you if you spell them correctly. ---
**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:** [June 8, 2023, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/13 "2023-06-08T00:00:48Z")
I’ve literally had it happen with the word in the title. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2023, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/14 "2023-06-08T00:05:55Z")
I literally reset my iOS keyboard and it did nothing when I typed “fuck” except show the word “fuck.” ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2023, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/15 "2023-06-08T00:37:17Z")
And of course stuff like this is why I turn off autocorrect. Let the spell checker redline _“are you sure that’s what you meant to type?”_ but I decide what to do about it. ---
**Author:** ![Nyvaak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Nyvaak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nyvaak)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2023, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/16 "2023-06-08T01:08:50Z")
Thread title mentioned autocorrect stories, so . . . A few years ago a co-worker texted a very large group of EMTs and paramedics with a text ending in, “sorry for the inconvenience.” Or at least she meant to. What she actually closed with (to a group who had cleaned all kinds of messes in ambulances) was “sorry for the incontinence.” ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2023, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/17 "2023-06-09T23:46:38Z")
One of the people on YouTube I watch mentions that it always corrects “Were” to “We’re” at the beginning of a sentence. Were they thinking that no one starts a sentence with that word??? ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2023, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-iphone-softwares-best-new-feature-no-more-autocorrect-to-ducking-this-thread-is-also-about-your-best-autocorrect-stories/985122/18 "2023-06-10T00:33:11Z")
Maybe this is obvious, but you don’t have to be restrained by the IPhone operating system. There is a setting you can go to for your IPhone where you can customize autocorrects. For example, if I type “Ill”, I’ve set it to autocorrect to I’ll, because I do it so often. You could set it so duck becomes fuck if you wanted. You can also use this to create “quickkeys”, so some symbol gives you an entire sentence. I use this at work when sending the same text phrases to clients all the time (I.e. three asterisks translates into “I’m sorry I missed your call. This is my cell phone number. Feel free to text or call at your convenience. Or you can contact my assistant to set up an appointment.”)