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My iPhone almost always replaces the word make (lower-case) with the word Male (yes, with a capital M). I don't get auto-correct suggestion in a bubble. The change happens automatically immediately after I press the Space key after typing make.

I think this has been going on about 3-4 months. I’m wondering if I’m losing my mind. Almost every time I type the word make (including just there; I am typing this on my phone) it just magically changes to Male, and I have to select the word and manually retype it.

I‘ve checked in Settings app → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement, and there’s no such replacement defined.

So it seems my iPhone has just learned to do this, but I can’t think of any time I would have made this substitution myself.

Question: How can I fix this (without globally disabling auto-correction)?

Bonus points for curiosity: Why has my iPhone started doing this? I can’t see how it could learn to replace a very common word with a much less common word (with nonstandard capitalisation, at that). Seems like some kind of broken machine learning algorithm stuck in a weird self-affirming loop. But if so, why would this bug only manifest in a single persistent unwanted substitution? (My iPhone does seem to have reluctantly accepted that I rarely meant to type ducking, so clearly it can learn.)

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    What model of iPhone & version of iOS?
    – IconDaemon
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 10:19

2 Answers 2

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If iOS is persistent in making this correction, make a text replacement:

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-text-replacements-iph6d01d862/ios

Put the correct text as both the replacement and the shortcut.

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Open any app (Notes, Messages) with a text field and type the word make normally. Now when iPhone auto-correction subsystem offers a correction, simply tap on the button show besides the correction.

Now quit the app completely from multitasking UI and repeat this 4-5 times, until your iPhone stops suggesting the auto-correction to Male.

This way you have effectively made it learn that you do not want make to be changed to Male.

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  • I should have mentioned: it does not show the autocorrect bubble. It just makes the substitution when I type the space after “make”.
    – callum
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 9:32

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