This is not a sponsored post. I’m not being paid to write about cool stuff that makes my life easier.
An earlier version of this article appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Stepping Up, the official newsletter of Career Step. I’ve updated and revised it for a more general audience. All rights still reserved by your humble blogger.
What good is a text expander? To put it simply, a text expander is good for saving keystrokes. The productivity benefits are obvious, but did you know a text expander can improve your accuracy as well?
I tend to divide my text expander entries into three categories: words, phrases, and boilerplate. “Words” are, unsurprisingly, words. “Phrases” are several words used together. “Boilerplate” refers to larger blocks of text, such as a standard paragraph or letter you need on a regular basis. Let’s look at how you can make the most of these, starting with words.
Take the word “refer.” A pretty common word in casual and business discussions. “Refer” is also a root word, with a number of suffixes that can be applied. You can take advantage of this pattern in your text expander and save yourself a lot of keystrokes over the course of a day.
ref = refer
refs = refers
refg = referring
refd = referred
refc = reference
refl = referral
refls = referrals
The short form can be whatever you will remember best. Keep a consistent pattern for the suffixes. When possible, use a short form that will trigger a spellcheck hit. “Ref” is not in the spellcheck lexicon, so if for some reason I type “ref” and it didn’t expand as intended, the spellcheck will flag it for me. Think for a moment about what it would mean to have an unexpanded short form in a report. Imagine an editor seeing it. Or your supervisor. Or the client.
I also have months of the year in my text expander. My own preference has been to have “Feb” expand to “February,” and “Jany” to “January” (I don’t use “Jan” for “January” since “Jan” is a personal name, not just a nickname for the first month of the year), and so forth.
A good word entry can also help with irregular capitalization. Let’s say you’re writing a story with a company name like EvilCorp. Irregularly capitalized words can trip up my fingers sometimes, so I would set up an entry to turn “evilcorp” into “EvilCorp,” or even just “ec” to “EvilCorp.”
Another kind of word to add is the typo. “Teh” and “wtih” are two words I’ve had in every word expansion program I’ve ever used. You’re the best judge of the words that give you the most trouble, so when you realize you’ve just backspaced and retyped a word that you always mistype, make a text expander entry.
Moving on to phrases, a good text expander lets you save time with your most popular phrases and sentences:
ayk = as you know
ayrem = as you remember
isbn = it should be noted
appopp = appreciate the opportunity
I find phrases are most helpful to me in the context of correspondence, but if I were writing something where I wanted to repeat a character’s catchphrase, I’d probably turn it into a phrase entry.
Next up is boilerplate, where you want to use large chunks of text but don’t want to type out the whole thing again and again. For a writer, one of the more obvious applications of boilerplate is for a cover letter to accompany a submission:
I’m submitting my short story “Really Awesome Tale”, a previously unpublished work of fiction. My past publications include “Thrilling Adventure” in the November 2017 issue of Exciting Stories, “Sad Romantic Story” in the March 2018 issue of Stories That Make Us Cry, and “Experimental Thingy” in the June 2018 issue of We’re So Avant-Garde.
Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.
I’ve used a few different text expanders over the years, most notably InstantText and PC Shorthand. I became a Shorthand fan years ago because I loved that it sat quietly in my system tray until I needed it. I’m a big fan of tech that waits until it’s triggered. Shorthand is very flexible, allowing you to incorporate keystroke commands such as “tab” or “bold” or “italics.” As they tell you in their FAQ, “To summarize: If you can do something entirely using only keystrokes, you should, in most cases, be able to create a Shorthand macro to simulates those keystrokes.”
Using a text expander isn’t magic. You can still develop a repetitive stress injury if you spend too much time on the keyboard, but a text expander is an invaluable tool if you’ve sustained an RSI or had some other functional loss.
Rachel
I'm a writer, a knitter/spinner/weaver, a young stroke survivor, and a type 2 diabetic.
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