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Tom’s Tech Tips

Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Darn that iPhone Diptionary!

As much as I love my iPhone®, the autocorrect feature needs improvement. You know what I mean. It changes words we’re typing into words we don’t mean to type. Just the other day I received a text from a good friend that said “Phuket.” Now, you and I know that Phuket is a beach resort in Thailand. But what Siri, Steve Jobs and the Apple Nation doesn’t get is how or why that got into a regular text instead of the word “okay.”

In short, the iPhone can make decisions for us, both good and bad, whether Certified Legal Nurse Consultants want it to or not. If we’re in a hurry, communicating with an attorney-client and we misspell a word, then mistakenly accept the new word, it becomes part of our dictionary for now and evermore. More disturbingly, as we type and make typos, the iPhone learns those words and prompts us to include them in the future. Now “Okay” becomes “Phuket,” “dictionary” becomes “diptionary,” and the list grows. If you have too much time on your hands there’s even a funny website dedicated to autocorrect errors.

So how does a CLNC® consultant reset her iPhone dictionary to get rid of those pesky misspelled words? In two words – you can’t. At least not as of the date of this Tech Tip. If you’d bought a different smartphone – like an Android® or a Blackberry® device (is anyone out there still using one?) – you could go into the settings, locate the dictionary and customize it. Simply Google “how do I change the dictionary for a [insert your phone here]” for instructions to do this on your smartphone.

But for now, we few, we happy few, we band of iPhone users must remain ever diligent and on the lookout for misspelled words, bad grammar and misplaced punctuation in our professional communications – just as Miss Twilliger told us to way back in 6th grade English. At least until someone develops an app for that.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

P.S. Comment and share your funniest auto-correct errors here.

3 thoughts on “Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Darn that iPhone Diptionary!

  1. Thank you for an amazing tech tip column. I have found your information most valuable and entertaining. In case this would help under certain circumstances, I did have to reset my iphone dictionary at one time and I did it on the iphone under the settings buttons > general > reset > reset keyboard dictionary. Thank you ever so much for keeping us all going every week!

  2. That does indeed reset the diptionary (just kidding) – but back to factory specs. Then you have to train it all over again.

    It is one solution but I’d still rather be able to edit out individual words.

  3. I thought I typed, “she was crowning” (OB case) and it was too late when I realized that it had come out “she was crowing!” Ha ha… I sent my attorney a message saying that the patient may very well have been crowing at that point, but I didn’t think that is what the doctor meant in her note….thankfully he has a sense of humor.

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*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.

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