The facilITy where the user can type more characters before the system has fully responded to those already typed. Type-ahead is common on most current systems. IT allows the user to type wIThout worrying that the computer may miss input because IT is temporarily busy, e.g. reformating a page, checking spelling, or simply suffering from network latency. There is usually some limIT to the amount of input the system can buffer, beyond which IT _will_ lose input. [Equivalent term for speech recognITion?] (2003-06-15)