Predictive Text

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What Does Predictive Text Mean?

Predictive text is a technology used in text messaging that suggests words to a user based on the letters being entered and the overall context of the phrase being written. This technology is mainly used in smartphones and tablets to make writing and text messaging easier and more efficient.

Techopedia Explains Predictive Text

Predictive text is primarily designed to reduce the number of key strokes required to write a word or phrase. Typically, predictive text works on the principles of linguistics, and may also use a database of entries or terms the user has entered in the past.

Predictive text has gained some infamy for its frequent failure to choose the appropriate word in favor of something that's entirely inappropriate for the situation. Images of smartphone message strings that show hilarious predictive text failures have become a popular Internet meme.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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