[mdavis501]

I have an iPad Pro 12.9-inch, 3rd generation running 12.3.1. I have the detachable apple keyboard, which I very much like. I'm new to Apple products so this question may have an obvious answer known to more experienced Apple users.

When I type on the hardware keyboard (which seems to have a wonderful feel) in any document app, such as Pages, I see predicted words in a grey bar that is at the bottom of the screen. Often the predictive words appear very quickly, before i have even typed half the letters. I'd like to use the suggested/predicted word, but the only way I can see to do this is to remove my hands from the keyboard and touch the word. This is extremely inefficient and I could easily have typed the word faster than stopping to touch the word and then re-positioning my fingers to the keyboard.

Is there a keyboard procedure (shortcut or key combination) that I can type to use the predicted word without removing my hands from the keyboard? I've tried all of the keys that would make sense to me but to no avail.

Am I missing something?

Note: there are times when I'm typing and the word or words are highlighted in the grey bar showing the suggested words. When the word/words are highlighted I see that I can merely press the space bar key and it will use the suggested word/words. It's not clear what causes the highlighting of some words and most of the time NO highlighting.