GRRR!!
If you’re like me (and Dan), you’ve been putting up with your iOS device ‘correcting’ your spelling to American English even though you have your keyboard set to British English. You’ll also, like us, be amazed to learn that there is a very simple way to fix it once and for all: proper English auto-corrections and spell-checking, like what the Queen done talk. Stick with me to find out how (or to point and laugh if you already knew).
If your auto-correction or spell-check function keeps going all American on you (favorite instead of favourite, color instead of colour etc), then you have the wrong keyboard installed. It’s an easy mistake to make and here’s how it happens.
Look like yours?
If you hop into Settings –> General –> International –> Keyboards you will find that ‘English’ is set as the keyboard language by default. Underneath it you may, in some circumstances, see the word ‘British’ in grey, meaning that in the sub-menu beyond this screen the British keyboard option has been selected. This is how mine was set-up, and I thought that this was correct. After all, it certainly looks it: it’s the correct language and ‘British’ is chosen as a sub-option. What else should you have to do?
Correct option
Well, it turns out that ‘English’ here actually means American English, and selecting British doesn’t change the dictionary that controls auto-correction and spelling checks as you would be excused for thinking. What you actually need to do is tap ‘Add New Keyboard…’ and choose ‘English (UK)’. Once this option is added, you can then tap ‘edit’ and delete the (American) ‘English’ option.
That's better!
Once you’ve done this, auto-correct will accept ‘colour’ and ‘humour’ and other correctly-spelled words, and the spell-check function will no longer offer suggestions like ‘favorite’ and ‘realize’.
We’re not sure how long this has been around but when I discovered it last night and showed Dan this morning, we both felt sure it must be new. I have since, however, found posts on forums offering this as a solution as far back as June, suggesting that this has been in place for at least as long as iOS 4 came out.
Did you guys already have the correct setting? Are we the only ones that didn’t know? Or is this a revelation to you as well? Let us know in the comments, but please: be good humored humoured about it.
Haha, Nice find there Steve.
Im still running 4.0 on my 3GS and yep found it with no problems at all
Cheers
(evopwr has made 6 comments)
Thanks v much!
(sheppy99 has made 32 comments)
Nice one guys. I sat down just the other week to see if I could make this very change. Took a bit to figure out but I feel a little less americanised / americanized once again
(s.p.w has made 41 comments)
Great! Thanks Steve. Another niggle bites the dust.
(Ivan has made 32 comments)
Nice work, thanks guys, and now with the upgrade, the.co.nz is now available.
(Topes has made 66 comments)
Thanks. Any idea if this could be done via a policy when connecting to a work domain?
Would be nice to ensure all work iPhones were configured this way. Thanks
(GodIsI has made 2 comments)
“like what the Queen done talk.” Outstanding.
Thanks for the tip. Stay our of my texts, America.
(BadNewsBrown has made 2 comments)
Awesome guys, thanks.
That used to really annoy me!
(oratoris has made 22 comments)
Well done! Yes I to hated the other way of spelling annoyed me, Will let hubby know aswell.. thank you again, have also passed on this site to a few other people who have since purchased iphones
(feee has made 16 comments)
I’ve had it on UK English for ages…
(drumsninja has made 7 comments)
Champion. I’m one to ferret through menus but hadn’t found I could get ‘real’ spelling either. Thankyou thankyou.
(leStar has made 65 comments)
This is not new, it was in iOS 1.0 (or whatever we called it back then
). I’ve had it set up like this since week one of owning my 1st gen touch 
(Subject22 has made 5 comments)
Mmm but here’s the dilemma. If I want correct spelling, I have to accept that there will be a new little icon on my keyboard that tells me I’m using English UK. It’s right beside the 123 button and I hit it all the time – it squishes up the 123 key.
Can I remove the icon from my keypad? I think I prefer US spelling to having less keyboard space :-\
(Bebe has made 15 comments)
@ Bebe:
Are you talking about the little ‘globe’ icon? That will only be there if you have two or more keyboards installed. If you delete the US keyboard leaving only the English one, that globe won’t be there. The reason it shows up in my screenshot is that I also have an Emoji keyboard installed for emoticons.
Brilliant………thanks. It seems a lot of us didn’t know this.
(elraynz has made 5 comments)
Oh thanks so much for this! I didn’t know and now i can put on spell check again brilliant!
(Nikki has made 17 comments)