[Modified3019]

My favorite peeve is when I want to place the text caret at some point, and instead iOS refuses to do anything other than autoselect a whole word, forcing me to select somewhere far away first, then finally long press where I want.

I really fucking wish I could turn off auto selection.

I only use this damned thing because work pays for it.

[generalizations]

Press space on the onscreen keyboard for ~2 secs and you can move the caret like a cursor. Not many people know that trick, but it totally solves what you're describing.

[ASalazarMX]

Which I think is utterly dumb, because the intuitive action to correct a mistake is moving the cursor to the mistake, not select a word (or a random number of words, it does that too).

The space cursor trick is an hidden feature users have no way of visually discovering unless by typing accident, or when someone tells them. It only exists because the cursor behaves unexpectedly.