Ah Grasshopper, so you’re addicted to typing faster with text expansion. Tis a worthy pursuit.
Come and I shall reveal yet more secr—
(cough)
Sorry about that. Got something stuck in my throat.
Thanks for your interest
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If you’re new to text expansion …
If this is your first encounter with text expansion. It’s kind of like modern shorthand, but it’s less work to use than improving your raw typing speed.
It speeds up typing common text blocks, often called “snippets,” and relieves the tedium of repeatedly typing long or short form text. Just tap your fingers on fewer keys. How hard can that be?
I know Word positions AutoCorrect as a spell correction tool (it’s in the name), but it is easily a productivity booster also.
Text expansion goes well beyond just spell correction. Many users have email templates, whole legal documents, etc. Although those uses are outside the scope of today’s content.
There are a few idiosyncrasies with text expansion, but I’ve used them regularly in work and other documents to save hours of typing time.
More importantly for writers in today’s content, I’ve also used them extensively in my novels, content notes, etc.
Check out the introductory article …
Before we get too deep in the weeds with today’s tips, if you’re new to text expansion, check out the first article or this previous video on the topic before you try to tackle these more intermediate examples for writers.
If this is your first exposure to the topic, I wouldn’t want to turn you off a good productivity tool because the examples below look a little complicated.
Text expansion tools
I write in Microsoft Word, so my main text expansion tool is just plain old AutoCorrect.
Yep, you heard me right. It’s blazing fast and “free” if you’re already using Word.
If you don’t use Word, two other paid alternatives are TextExpander and Text Blaze.
This newsletter isn’t about those applications specifically, but I’ve used both and each is excellent in its own way. Both apps are similar with a lot of overlap in functionality. Let me know if you’d like to hear more about them.
Why more text expansion tips?
Uh, to get faster.
If you're already like using text expansion when writing, I’ve added some patterns over time to handle common chunks of text, and I wanted to share.
As writers, we’re not just typing the same types of emails over and over, so we need more generalized text snippets than boilerplate emails and such.
We’ll target a lot of common words, but the goal today is to expand on those general ideas and improve typing speed while taking advantage of the muscle memory we’ve already developed when using our own personal text expansion snippets.
Pattern Tips
Basically we’re going to take some of our already used abbreviations and append or prepend letters to expand our existing trove of snippets.
I’m not trying to present these examples as the gold standard or “you ought to use these” because your more commonly used words will probably be different than mine.
These are just some options to think about rather than an exhaustive list, so pick and choose what works for you.
The list is a little long, but I wanted to give you a lot of ideas for expanding your own snippet list.
Quick Tips
As a starting point, I often use the first few letters of the word, sometimes leaving out vowels sometimes not, depending on available abbreviations and ease of typing.
The goal is not developing a “perfect system” but achieving a productivity boost with low up front effort. Don’t pick abbreviations that feel like they tie your fingers in knots.
Adjective and adverb patterns
Some adjectives have natural adverb forms:
df → definite
aut → automatic
Why not add the corresponding adverb in a similar format? I like adding a “y” at the end of the abbreviation.
dfy → definitely
auty → automatically
More verb patterns
Some verbs have a bunch of useful forms. I often use a pattern of the first few letters and then add a suffix for the various tenses or forms.
It sounds more complicated than it is.
sep → separate
sepd → separated
sepg → separating
seps → separates
I usually also add the corresponding noun in the same pattern unless it already has a common abbreviation in another form.
sepn → separation
For me, they don’t have to save any additional characters if they stay relatively consistent with the main abbreviation and are easy to remember.
Resolving verb and noun pattern conflicts
If there is a separate verb form similar to a common noun for you, you can shorten the verb form (or the reverse).
When writing my newsletter and blog notes, a common noun for me is:
sel → selection
But what about the verb select? I also use it a lot.
sl → select
sld → selected
slg → selecting
I suppose these aren’t perfectly consistent with my own established rules, but “sel” was one of my earlier abbreviations before I started coming up with patterns to help me remember them, so it kind of stuck.
Preposition patterns
Some prepositions occur often with other words such as articles or pronouns, so combine them:
ft → of the
ot → on the
nt → in the
tt → to the
twh → toward him
twr → toward her
Since the above abbreviations had several possible conflicts, I varied the starting characters some to achieve abbreviations easy enough to remember.
Also “him” and “her” both start with an h, so I use an “r” for “her” as a general character swap throughout my list.
Pronoun patterns
I created a base pronoun abbreviation for some and then extended it to various iterations of the word.
sm → some
smg → something
smw → somewhere
smo → someone
sme → someone else
smh → somehow
Sometimes I vary the pattern when I’ve already used an abbreviation for something else.
st → sometime
sts → sometimes
Phonetic abbreviations
Some words are difficult to find a good abbreviation for them, so I’ve tried a few phonetic abbreviations:
enf → enough
Include punctuation
You can also include punctuation in the snippet. For example, the abbreviation
fe, → For example,
This works naturally since your fingers want to hit the comma anyhow. The trick is to include the comma in the snippet definition also.
Dialog tags
We can speed up typing some dialog tags especially those including punctuation:
,ss, → ,” she said, “
,hs. → ,” he said.
Admittedly, these look a little convoluted, but my use case was already typing a preceding comma, so the next characters are more natural than they appear in isolation.
Similar words
You could try to include abbreviations for similar words even if you don’t type those words nearly as often. I already defined have.
hv → have
And I found myself wanting to type save using the same pattern, so I added:
sv → save
Not that I use this word as much, but it was an easy addition.
Compound text expansions
This is a more recent addition to my text expansion toolbox.
As you use your text expansions, you’ll realize you’re still repeatedly typing the same words together even as abbreviations. If they occur often enough, why not combine them?
osel → of the selection
idoc → in the document
You probably need to have some practice with your own text expansions first, so the extended versions roll off your fingertips better.
Overloading some real words
Some overloaded words are okay when using text expansions.
Since there are only so many combinations using a keyboard, I sometimes let my own abbreviations replace short words I rarely type. For example, I defined:
mob → mail-order bride
since I rarely write about the actual mob, but I do like writing in that genre. Other words I just don't use as much as the text expansion, so the abbreviation takes priority.
beg → beginning
For the infrequent cases where you need the actual overridden word, AutoCorrect in Microsoft Word allows you to tap the Undo shortcut to reverse the text expansion.
Unfortunately, this may be a little more frustrating if you use other text expansion apps since they may not undo the expansion like AutoCorrect does (i.e., the application will allow you to undo the full expansion, but you will have to work around actually typing the abbreviation without the expansion occurring).
General Tips
I’m not trying to convince you to memorize and use all my text expansions. Start with your own, and as you get used to using them, add repeating patterns to your list.
The above are just ideas. I’m just suggesting some patterns in case you’d like some structure.
Don’t be exhaustive
I don’t try to be exhaustive about it. I’m not writing a text expansion dictionary. I’m just trying to type faster with easily accessible abbreviations.
If you make it too hard on yourself, you’re less likely to use it.
Don’t over optimize
I don’t try to optimize abbreviations to the nth degree (although that is my nature). For example, my fingers already naturally type “sep” so just go with it rather than trying to save that extra character with “sp”.
Patterns notes
Extensions of your base text expansions don’t necessarily have to save any additional characters if they stay consistent with the main abbreviation and are easy to remember.
Try some variations
You might even include two or three variations of the same abbreviation when you first think of a new text expansion. Include them all for a while to see which one you like better.
Again, it’s not about achieving maximum efficiency but making improvements with limited effort.
Slight warning
Writers already tend to overuse a few phrases while writing (my first novel had lots of grimacing before the first edit).
If you define text expansions for body language or similar actions in your text, be careful you don’t over indulge. You may not want to increase your editing workload by making them even easier to use.
On the other hand, I also understand the notion of “just getting something on the page” since it’s easier to work with something rather than nothing.
Keep practicing
I should probably add something profound or philosophical here, but … let’s go with practical instead.
Keep practicing as part of your normal workflow.
In the worst case if you mess up, just try the abbreviation again the next time. Although, don’t tell anyone that I sometimes actually delete the word and retype the abbreviation to try to reprogram my fingers.
Let me know if you have any other ideas. I’d be happy to compile a few of the best ones and share them others.
