Methods, handheld electronic devices, and computer-readable media for disambiguating an input into a handheld electronic device, are disclosed. The method includes, for example, detecting an ambiguous input including one or more selections of one or more input characters, generating one or more prefix objects corresponding with the ambiguous input, generating an output set comprising at least some of the one or more prefix objects, each of the at least some of the one or more prefix objects associated with an identified corresponding word object, determining the quantity of prefix objects in the output set is fewer than a predetermined quantity, and, based on the determination, adding as an orphan prefix object to the output set at a position corresponding with a relatively low frequency an additional prefix object of the one or more of prefix objects for which a corresponding word object was not identified, and outputting the output set.