Using your phone to communicate with your ex can be a dangerous endeavor.

In this world of instant gratification, smart phones have become an incredibly popular way for people to communicate. Whether you are sending text messages, updating your status or sending an email, doing it from your smart phone can have some pretty unforeseen and ugly consequences. Why, how you may ask, well a nifty little feature called autotype, autocorrect or predictive text can dramatically change your intended message.

Nearly all smart phones have this autocorrect feature built in and most have the feature turned on by default. Predictive text or autocorrect is designed to build a dictionary of words unique to you based on your usage. So if you have a name that is unique, you type it once and the phone remembers it. As you are typing it the next time it is automatically inserted once it recognizes the pattern, saving you the time of inputting the rest of the characters.

In most cases this is a great time saver, but often it can insert the wrong word and if you are not paying attention, the resulting communication can be very different than what you intended. A difficult situation can become a real ugly one, if the wrong words are sent to your former spouse. Mistakes can range from innocent and humorous to offensive and down right disgusting. You can imagine the impact on a message if "have" becomes "hate" or "like" becomes "lick". If you are not thoroughly checking your messages and updates before you hit send or create, you may find that your intended message just isn't making it through.

There are two easy ways to deal with this phenomenon:
1. Turn off the predictive or autocorrect function.
2. Make sure you proofread anything before committing it.

Both are simple, but will require a little more time on your part. It is probably worth it to spend a couple of extra minutes double-checking your work and avoid a major misunderstanding, especially if you and your ex are not on the best of terms.