That's not what I typed!

December 19, 2016 6:10 PM

I use SwiftKey on my HTC 10. Every so often the keyboard will add "&oq" to the end of a word for no apparent reason. I don't know how to stop it from happening. Once it happens to a particular word that word is marked for life. It's driving me nuts, but I love this app so I don't really want to change it. I haven't had much luck Googling solutions to the problem. Does anyone know what's going on and how to stop it?
posted by blackzinfandel to Technology (4 answers total)

This seems to be a thing.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:58 PM on December 19, 2016

I don't know what the &oq is about, but if you go into settings - language and input - personal dictionary, you'll see words you've accidentally added to your dictionary and you can delete them. That's general phone settings, not app settings, although the app may also have a dictionary setting.

The "&oq" may be related to google search in some way but I can't really imagine how it's happening. (I too sometimes get random search functions appended since the last google keyboard update added google search natively to the keyboard and I haaaaaaate it.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:59 PM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

"&oq" would be open quote, which on my keyboard is right next to the enter key. I can't tie that to a direct cause, but there might be a clue there.
posted by quinndexter at 8:15 PM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

You can also long-press on a suggestion in Swiftkey which gives you the option to remove it from the dictionary.
posted by tavegyl at 10:59 PM on December 19, 2016 [3 favorites]