iOS Weirdness

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
I'm sure I have a topic on this already, but...

Suddenly, every time I type "we", iOS immediately corrects this to "W.E". I have no idea why, but I must have corrected it back at least 20 times over the last couple of days yet still it persists. Bollox!
 
The only way I can reproduce this is by going to, “Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement” , then entering “W.E” as the Phrase, and “we” as the Shortcut.
After doing the above, I get the same behaviour as you reported.
 
W.E W.E W.E W.E

Nothing like that in my text replacement list (I already have my common preferred substitutions in there: eg, ie, ill instead of I'll...). The above is the result of including new shortcuts: we = we and W.E = we... but here's the killer - if I now deliberately type "W.E" I get "we", and if I type "we" I get "W.E"! PITA!!!!
 
I think some of the 'AI' behind this stuff has gone past being useful clever. The soft keyboard I use (Swype) has gone from being really good a couple of years ago to the point I'm close to chucking it and going back to entirely manual (digital?) input.
 
I guess it must have picked up something I typed (possibly by accident) and "decided" that's what I always want. The problem with iOS is that it gives the user no control over the dictionary (I have always disliked that).

I have tried turning off auto-correct in the past, but the vagaries of typing with a soft keyboard mean it is still marginally better to leave auto-correct turned on.
 
I'm surprised you can't edit your dictionary. Are you sure it's not buried in some obscure menu?

I've just switched from Swype back to the default Google keyboard (not an option for iOS I guess) and it's looking ok at present.
 
The only access the user has to the dictionary is to set the language and then create custom keyboard "shortcuts" - intended to be a means to create short character strings which automatically expand into longer standard phrases (I could, for example, make "bx" always expand as "bollox" :)), but handy for counteracting some of the sodding American expectations.

W.E is so damned resistant, I think because of the dot in the middle. (Curiously enough, I just typed "W.E" and got "we".)

What the hell is "W.E" anyway???
 
I guess I'm going to have to update iOS in the hope this makes it go away. I have resisted updating from 11.1 so far (my experience of updates is they rarely bring anything of benefit except to Apple). A previous update introduced a bug in Calendar resulting in being unable to reschedule an entry by drag&drop - I complained about that, maybe that's been fixed (you never know with Apple, they don't detail the content of the updates or make it easy to submit bug reports).

I know this all adds grist to the Apple-phobe's mill, but I get at least as much hassle with Android, and Apple products remain the gold standard for reliability and usability for the non-techie (let the arguments commence but I won't join in and I won't change my mind). At least the cost of ownership is now more reasonable.
 
non-techie
I wouldn't have thought you would fall into that category.

Yes, Google are also terrible about updates with no explanations, and indeed introducing bugs and never fixing or even acknowledging them. That said they don't appear to completely break the devices quite as often or publicly as Apple, but the different environments may account for that.
 
I wouldn't have thought you would fall into that category.
I have Windows/Linux for when I want to (and expect to have to) get down and dirty, my mobile devices should "just work" (and I've never owned one, but I would demand the same of a Mac).
 
Wow! I just accidentally triggered some kind of gesture control (iOS12, if that matters) that brought up a colour pallet and "hex colour" entry field. I don't have a colour picker app installed. Dunno how I did that, or what it is supposed to be. Pity I didn't have the presence of mind to screenshot it.
 
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