What happened to Auto-Correct in the iOS 7 update & can it be fixed?

Question

I am sooo frustrated & I can't take it anymore!!!
My keyboard has essentially taken on a mind of it's own since I did the iOS 7 update. And by the 'coded' messages I receive from family & friends, followed by "#%*+ed Auto-Correct!!!" I know I'm not the only one!
I find it changes words that are spelled correctly & are grammatically sound into something different. It doesn't know what an apostrophe is anymore. It has no sense of humor 'cause it can't figure out how to lol without capitalizing or turning it into something else. (My sister Quoll'ed at me earlier!)
What's goin' on & how can I get it back to the only sorta-sucky, but mostly funny stuff it did in iOS 6?
Thanks.

Answer 1

I've observed this too and have written to Apple feedback. Suggest everyone else do so as well.
What's happening is they've attempted to implement an autocorrect system that doesn't just look at the current word but the current word and the previous word. In theory that's a great idea, as sometimes the correct spelling will be dependent on context. Mostly, though, its effects are too aggressive and I find I'm ending up with many more errors than under iOS 6 (and I'm fairly accurate on the iP*).
The thing I specifically complained out – since it makes no sense at all – is the way iOS 7 autocorrect seems to hate commas!
If I type a phrase like "the line, therefore" iOS 7 will attempt to turn "line," into some a word without punctuation, e.g. "lines" or "lined". Only after I've typed "therefore" will it offer me the possibility of returning to what I actually typed ("line,"). And if I'm in a rush and don't tap the [x] on the proposed "correction" in time then I'm stuck with it and have to go back and manually edit. (Or I don't notice and end up sending someone a complete nonsense of a sentence.)
This kind of autocorrect is completely nuts. Especially on the iPhone, where you have to go to a different screen of the keyboard to type a comma, so you're hardly going to do it by accident! And on the iPad the corrections almost never involve adding letters that are physically close to the comma key on the keyboard, so again, you're hardly going to hit the comma key by accident if you want, for example, "lines".
My recommendation to Apple was that auto-correct should always respect all punctuation. (Or there should be a setting we switch on for "respect punctuation".)
And that autocorrect should focus on trying to correct the kinds of "real" errors that are made by tapping on adjacent keys instead of aggressively trying to predict what we're about to say and actually changing our words.
In the meantime, I've set up a custom shortcut [,,] which resolves to [, ] – basically on the same principle as two spaces resolving to a period. When I remember to use it, it mostly works quite well at giving me commas that stay stuck.