Why don’t you just turn off auto-correct?
The problem with turning off auto-correct is that it can pop up in multiple places, particularly in MS Office. I think I have killed it everywhere, but it’s like a super-weed that pups up everwhere in your yard.
Microsoft’s Office apps don’t use the macOS system auto-correct. They have their own proprietary proofing system. And yes, it’s annoying, especially because I disagree with a lot of their defaults.
Fortunately, I’m one of those geeky people who walks through every preference panel of an app, looking for interesting settings. So I can usually switch off those I expect to find annoying.
I totally agree with you and it has gotten much worse with OS15.4. One shouldn’t have to “turn off” auto-correct because it is brain-dead. Apple should fix it. In fact, they shouldn’t have released it in the first place!
Like others, I disabled auto-correct some time ago as it was just getting in my way. I had hoped that this would have been a primary target for Apple’s AI adventure, but seemingly not.
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I do not understand how spelling correction works on macOS. Apple introduced it some time ago, but I haven’t seen any documentation for it. We’re supposed to just intuit how it works. But it isn’t intuitive to me.
What I mean is, with “Check spelling as you type” and “Correct spelling automatically”, it will sometimes:
- Change the spelling of a word
- and underline it
- without underlining it
- Underline a word with blue dashes
- Underline a word with red dashes
- Show a bubble by the word with a different spelling in the bubble and an arrow
But what does this mean? What are the blue or red dashes signifying? Is it that the word has been corrected or that it is wrong? What’s in the bubble, the right spelling or the wrong spelling? Does the arrow change it from wrong to right or right to wrong?
And what do you do when you type a word with the correct spelling in this case, it autocorrects it to something else, so you change it back, then it autocorrects it, and then you change it back? How many times do you have to fight it before it finally gives up?
Is there a TidBITS article that does a deep dive into autocorrect on macOS?
I’m right there with you.
What I just relearned is that some Apple apps (Mail, Notes, and Messages, for sure) have a command Edit > Substitutions that makes changes for me that I usually do not want. It’s not correcting misspelled words, but it is changing what I typed (until I disabled the options) and, for me, contributed to the title of this thread (“Typing is a terrible experience on a Mac”).
No, but it’s an interesting thought. There are a lot of systems that play in this space so it might be tricky to figure out what’s doing what.
Extremely tricky because there are so many apps that could be dipping into the event chain.
If you want a nice, months-long, project consider how an average (not a professional) writer should set up their Mac to avoid embarrassment and encourage writing clear, engaging stuff given the huge number of purported writing aids.
Sorry to do it to you. . . . 
Dave
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