Warning: R-Rated language ahead.

(Updated: 2008-12-11, see end of post)

Since the release of the iPhone, some people have been annoyed at the iPhone’s spelling checker, which is, how shall we say, a little prudish.

For example, if you try to use a certain common “vulgarity”, iPhone will try to correct it, as seen here:

This is a source of great frustration to many people, because if you aren’t paying close attention, iPhone will “auto-correct” you and no doubt change the meaning of the sentence you were trying to write.

You can tap on the little “x” to cancel the auto-correction, and it will learn, but that learning seems to be extremely short-lived. [Turns out I was wrong. See update and correction below.]

There is no way that I am aware of to add a word to the iPhone dictionary, but you can work around the issue by being what I call “a sneaky bastard”.

The iPhone uses your list of Contacts as possible auto-complete or matching when you type. This makes sense, if you have someone’s name in your address book, you may very well find yourself typing it one day, and occasionally iPhone will even offer to correct my spelling of people’s names.

(Aside: That is pretty rare, however, because if iPhone sees a word capitalized and not at the beginning of a sentence, it seems to assume it is a name and often will not offer to auto-correct it.)

During an amazingly boring and poorly led meeting today, it occurred to me that I might be able to work around the “ducking iPhone” issue by creating a contact with this name:

This does seem to have solved the problem.

While iPhone does not seem to offer me the use of this name when I’m typing, it no longer tries to auto-correct it to “ducking”.

Note that I made both the first and last “names” lowercase. iPhone wants to capitalize the first and last names, so you’ll have to toggle the shift before typing.

I hope this helps make your iPhone a little less ducking annoying.

(I hope this is obvious, but you can use it for other words that iPhone doesn’t recognize as well. This is just, by far, the most common word I hear people complain about.)

ps - A fine addendum from William Thomas who commented that you do not have to put this in the Name field for this to work. I assumed that to be true, but never verified it. I will most likely create a contact named “Custom Dictionary” and add these words to that contact.

Update: A source who is, as they say, familiar with the situation, wrote in to tell me that I was wrong about the iPhone not learning if corrected. The explanation is that you have to type the word repeatedly, and not do what I was doing, which was typing the word several times and then deleting it. The more times you type it, then send it in an email/form/whatever, the greater “weight” it is given for future use. I’m not removing “FF” from my Address Book, but I wanted to set the record straight that I had been a little too ducking impatient.

Also

1. Yes, you could disable auto-complete altogether, but I rely on it far too much to turn it off completely.

2. I realize that some people will object to profanity (Hi Mom!). The reality is that a lot of people use the word, and it is a common frustration with the iPhone’s autocompletion. Checkout the Twitter search for ducking iPhone before today. Objecting to the word itself is completely missing the point. (And there are other words that iPhone doesn’t know too.)

3. Comments will be approved at my discretion. I have no intention of letting this deteriorate into a whine-fest about what words people use or don’t, nor for one line dismissals of the iPhone. Write your own post.

4. This article was picked up on Daring Fireball and BoingBoing Gadgets, and Wired, not to mention a fairly constant stream of folks on Twitter.

5. Follow @luomat on Twitter, if you like that sort of thing. Or my friend @jkestr who “shares the spotlight” in the screenshot above.

Now, I’m a fairly cautious person — well, let me clarify: by “I’m a fairly cautious person” I mean “Someone once told me that if he was going on a cross-country trip, he would want me to plan it, because I would make a contingency plan for every pothole along the way.”

(That person was my therapist. I’m not making this up.)

I have a distinct memory of thinking “Oh Merlin, you crazy paranoid man. Realistically, what are the chances that I’ll lose my iPhone? I mean, if they sell 10 million of them, how many people will lose them? And I’m going to plan to be one of them? Plus, how annoying would it be to have to enter that PIN every time I want to use my iPhone?”

Merlin added that every bit of personal contact info you have is probably on that phone. It’s a privacy issue not only for you, but for everyone in your address book.

“Oh Merlin, you crazy hippie, no one cares about my contact information. They’d probably just wipe all my information off the phone, or use it to call their friends in Russia.”

But despite all my protestations, I really am a cautious person, so I started locking my iPhone.

It is every bit as annoying as I’d thought it would be.

I may have even thought about disabling the PIN lock.

Then, last week, I left my iPhone behind at the courthouse when I went in to vote early.

My first thought was “Whew, at least it’s locked.”

So there it is.

A locked iPhone is not only more secure for your own data, but it’s also less useful for a casual thief who happens to find it after you left it somewhere. Can the lock be by-passed? Perhaps if someone had the technical know-how.

But most people who stumble across an unlocked phone will either poke around it, maybe use it, or maybe turn it in to lost-and-found.

A locked phone is almost certainly going to just get turned in with a “Hey, I found this sitting over there”.

So thanks, Merlin, for being slightly more paranoid than I was about this.

Now, does anyone know how to make an iPhone wallpaper that has “If Found Please Contact” information on it?

Until now, using Twitter on the iPhone has meant using a website such as the excellent Hahlo.

Compared to a web app, Twitterific is much faster and easier to use.

Killer feature?

Inside Twitterrific is a “mini browser” which is used when you click on links inside Twitter.

No waiting for a Mobile Safari tab to launch when you want to checkout a link.

Genius.

No Twitter user will want to be without Twitterrific.

Don’t take my word for it, try the free ad-supported version which will show occasional ads via The Deck.

Ads are not overdone, but if you prefer ad-free, the $10 cost is very reasonable.