Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Spell Check/Grammer

When you are typing in an application, mail, text edit, etc, occasionally when you finish a word, a suggestion will pop up with an 'x' after it. If you do nothing the suggestion will be substitued, if you use the 'x' the word will be left as you typed it.

When I type my full name, the suggestion pops up with my name in all CAPS. If I don't want my name is all CAPS I have to click the 'x'. I'm sure this is something I did but I'd like to get rid of my name in all CAPS. I've looked in the spelling database and it is not there. This just started in the past few weeks. There is nothing in the System Settings under Keyboard.

Thanks in advance.

I've seen your "x" options only in Messages, and then, only as suggested emoji replacements for stuff like :(, :P, etc.

Hmmm... I just found a way to turn them off, but I couldn't find anything similar in Text Edit, for instance.

But the OS must be finding the caps somewhere, and the only place I can think of is if your name is maybe capitalized in your Apple ID prefpane.

Checked the Apple ID, name is spelled first letter capitalized only. I can confirm this all CAPS thing is happening in Safari, TextEdit, Bean, Messages.

In System Settings (Preferences) under Keyboard are some options regarding spelling and spell checking. Most text applications (like Text Edit) also have a spelling setting. Take a look at those and see if changing any of them does the trick for you.

I have checked the Keyboard System Setting and found nothing relating to my name or all capital letters. Also checked the Setting for each of the applications I mentioned and again nothing relating to my name in capital letters.

I don't understand why you see those "X" options at all, particularly since there doesn't seem to be a pref that relates to them.

Are you maybe running some kind of 3rd party software that may be involved?

I have the distinct impression that Apple's documentation has fallen behind. I believe your unwanted corrections are arising from the Users Dictionary this CultOfMac article tells how to both add and remove corrections from that dictionary.

I hope that solves your problem, but please let us know either way.

No 3rd Party app that could deal with this issue.

Thank you Joe, you got it. That solved my problem, not sure how but got my name in all CAPS in there. Deleted that and everything back to normal. Sometimes I think that MacOS is just getting too complicated for an old geezer like me.

I looked in that doc, opened up a new Text Edit doc and mistyped a word expecting a suggestion, but got only the red dot underline.

What am I missing?

If you only get the red underline, it indicates Siri has no suggested alternate spelling.

Try typing the direction 'south' in all lower case. If I type all lower case I get the popup, with a little x to dismiss, with the first letter capitalized.

I don't use Siri, so I guess that's it.

Thanks.

Whether you call on Siri per. se. is immaterial. Siri underlies all Apple text recognition technology including the spelling "suggestions". So you do use Siri, whether your know it or not.

Among the touted features in iOS/iPadOS 17 and Sonoma is enhanced AI in Siri that will enable spelling and grammar checking to offer suggestions based not only on dictionary lookup, but also on textual context, which is a much more sophisticated technology. Unlike third party applications like LanguageTool that "[i]phone home[/]" to a central processor that performs those services, I understand Siri's enhanced AI is self-contained on the device itself (but I haven't tested it yet).

I"m not a big fan of AI at all! (I'm really curious about that incident reported recently in which, in a simulation, military AI reportedly killed the drone operator, which report was walked back the next day. Sorry to say that I don't trust the military in the least.)

As long as I have to interact with Siri only in the background, i.e., it's turned off on my MBP, I'm OK, nor is there anything I can do if I'm not.

On the other hand, though, I hope to finish my life without EVER having to talk to my computer or have it talk to me.

Unfortunately, AI is a big tent covering an enormous range of technologies.

I have SEVERE reservations about AI as used in OpenAI's ChatGPT and its derivatives and imitators because of the lack of any ethical constraints in its design and output. There is a LOT of work to be done there by a LOT of people in a LOT of different disciplines. On the other hand, there are many functions that fit the basic definition of AI and have been around for decades that are very useful, even essential, in modern systems.

Personally, I am always asking Siri to place a phone call, send a text message, or even turn the lights off or on. I never worry about my phone ringing when I am in church, asleep at night, during the symphony concert, or at the theater with no vocal or physical action on my part because I have trained Siri to automatically switch into Do Not Disturb mode when I am in those locations or during those times -- Siri even changes the wallpaper on my phone and watch to be appropriate to the time and place. I could do all that for myself, but AI (a.k.a. SIRI) sure makes it convenient (or maybe I am just lazy )

OK, so I do use AI for text recognition - never thought of it that way - but the way "decision-making" is dropped in there as a one-off reminds me of that recent report of a simulated drone killing its operator because it perceived their direct orders as threats to its perceived task. (I'll forever be skeptical about the military's brushing it off as "never happened.")

Whether your story is true or merely apocryphal (which is what I suspect) is immaterial, but it is potentially possible. I grew up reading Isaac Asimov's I Robot and Foundation and naively assumed any rational work in AI would include his three (sometimes four or even five) "Laws of Robotics" in some form or another. It appears that either the developers of today's chatbox tools were either too young or had too much hubris to be bothered with any such ethical concerns. It is only now when the genie is already emerging from the bottle that the more thoughtful ones are recognizing the crucial need for these ethical constraints. Unfortunately, too many seem unable to see beyond their own hip pockets.

<https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...might-as-well-have-done/?sh=6fe395f22aa9> is just one of many articles. I don't know why it took so long to reach the "front page."

Call me a skeptic, but I'm not entirely convinced by the USAF denial.

Your mention of the three laws of robotics got me wondering about the evil robot which menaced Captain Video. Its name, I Tobor, was Robot 1 spelled backwards, but I wonder if it was really a subtle homage to Asimov's "I Robot," and its evil ways a play on the three laws, which did not govern its behavior. (I loved Captain Video, but I started first grade three months after it debuted, and my folks turned the TV off. )