TextExpander: Abbreviation Strategies
Posted by JeanI just got a short tip from Austin in Carlow, Ireland:
I have all my abbreviations ending with “z” so that there is little chance of them getting confused with a word I don’t want substituted. It makes them easier to remember, and not many words (quiz is the only one that springs to mind) end in z.
This is the first tip where someone has suggested using the last character in an abbreviation to differentiate it from actual words.
When we first started posting TextExpander tips, we got a fairly extensive one from TJ on organizing abbreviations by context. That tip inspired me to use the forward slash (/) as the first character in all my abbreviations for URLs, i.e. /somm = http://www.smileonmymac.com, /gm = http://maps.google.com. [1]
I’ve started using “x” as a leading character for a lot of miscellaneous snippets, on the theory that not many words begin with “x”. I’d have to rewire my brain to think like Austin, using the last character as the differentiator.
What about you? Share your TextExpander abbreviation strategies in the comments.
[1] You might wonder how I can type my abbreviations without expanding them. The trick is to move the cursor using the arrow keys backward and forward once before you get to the end of the abbreviation. I learned this in a tip from Greg.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I use a mixture, organized by context. Generally, if I’m using a non-letter character to differentiate them, it will be at the end. If it’s a letter or short letter sequence, then it’s at the beginning.
For instance, all my URL snippets are very short and end with a backslash:
b/ = http://beckism.com/
My email address snippets (which I use a lot) are usually the first part of an address (or abbreviations, for longer email addresses) followed by the @ sign:
ian@ = ian@mydomain.com
And finally, my salutations for emails end with a comma:
hf, = Hey folks,
Then I have a number of work related snippets that start with “tt” because I work for a company called Tierra Technology, but I actually find it harder to remember those. The last character works really well for me because so far I’ve been able to use characters that I associate with the context or that I need to type anyway.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:56 am
At the moment, for most of my snippets I use the first letter twice. For example, my personal email address is eemailp and my work on is eemaili (the company name begins with an I).
For web sites I use ‘www’ and then a short code, so my personal site is wwwbu.
I actually find that longer snippets are more easily remembered than short ones and an extra character or two doesn’t slow me down too much.
March 26th, 2008 at 11:57 am
@ Simon: Good point about longer abbreviations. Sometimes I might be I’a bit compulsive about using the shortest possible (and increasing my “time saved” stats by a character or two…)
April 26th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I am a physician who switched from PC to Mac two months ago. I was heavily reliant on Robotype for the PC which I still feel is superior to TextExpander. However, now having happily moved to the “dark side” I am using TextExpander. My tips after years of using this kind of software are the following.
1. For all addresses with other contact info I use the person’s last name with a zero at the end. For example, for myself it would be strum0. I use a space as a delimiter. So.
strum0, space would be
Stephen B. Strum, MD
XXX Street
Ashland, OR 97520
T: 541-xxx-xxxx
F: 541-xxx-xxxx
M: 541-xxx-xxxx
E: stephen@xxxxxxxxx
For any URL I use what it the URL relates to and end the abbreviation with url. So, if I need to tell a patient or a physician that they need a special vitamin D level done at a particular lab, I can indicate that with vitDquesturl. Expanded with spacebar tap it looks like:
http://cas2.questdiagnostics.com/scripts/webdos.wls?MGWLPN=TBCWP65&wlapp=DOS&OrderCode=17306X&SITE=4&SearchString=VSaturday&tmradio=title
For my emails in closing I would type “sr” for Sincere regards,
Stephen or “mbty” for
My best to you,
Stephen
For medical terms I use the zero after the abbreviation; for example: PSADT stands for PSA doubling time. I use snippet PSADT0.
Thus, expanded “psadt0″ = PSA doubling time (PSADT)
I hope this helps,
Regards to all,
Stephen