On iPhone’s Autocorrections

One feature of iOS4 that is yet to receive a great deal of coverage is the changes to the dictionary used for autocorrect. Unsurprising really, but for a grammar pedant such as myself, I find it rather interesting.

All of those who live outside Reading (whichever way you look at it - that’s got to be the majority of Apple’s customer base) will be greatly relieved to find that the iPhone no longer corrects ‘reading’ to ‘Reading’. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that even if you are a regular visitor to Reading, you probably use the word ‘reading’ more often. It’s great that this weird foible has been sorted. Well done Apple. 

Of course, in return, there are some equally ridiculous decisions. Why, in Jobs’ name would you ever need the word ‘white’ autocorrected to ‘White’? And yet this is what the new OS does, apparently system-wide, regardless of context.

And why, if you start a text with ‘Me’ does it autocorrect to ‘Mr’? I quite regularly agree with people by saying ‘Me too’ or ‘Me neither’ but I am yet to find any circumstance in which I’ve started any text with ‘Mr’. It’s just not that formal a medium.

One correction that people might like to include in this collection is actually rather sensible. The iPhone always corrects ‘its’ to ‘it’s’. Now, I realise that sometimes ‘its’ is the right form of the word, so I’m not saying that it’s right to correct your grammar on all these occasions. However, typing ‘it’s’ on the iPhone is a pain. It requires you to pop into the punctuation keyboard, and for a word that common it’s far more effort than it’s worth. What Apple have done is to make the more time-consuming word the default, and if you don’t want it in a particular situation, just cancel the correction. Similarly, it always corrects the word ‘wont’ to ‘won’t’. The word ‘wont’ is a great word, and I use it a lot, as is my wont, but I’d still rather the iPhone autocorrected to the more popular, and more widely used alternative.

But ‘White’? Even if it was your own surname, I’m not sure that that autocorrection would save you any time.