Thursday, August 30, 2007

Recapping Keyboard Shorthand English

Before moving on to other aspects of the AutoCorrect function, I will briefly repeat the simple techniques required to create your own shorthand English.

Every 'root' word in the English language can be uniquely identified by its first few letters, commonly the first four or five letters but frequently less, occasionally more. This unique identity becomes your AutoCorrect code for that word.

When you need to go to five letters or more before you obtain a unique identity, there will be one word in the group that you use more frequently than the others and you can choose to code it with its first three or four letters. An example would be vin for vindicate and vind for vindictive, vinc for vincible and so on. It's nice to be able to type vindn for vindictiveness and vinn for vindication but I use invin for invincible. It sure does save a lot of typing time and once you have shortened all your long words with AutoCorrect codes, you won't go back to the old way.

It is generally not worth you while to further shorten words that are already short. Concentrate instead on shortening the long words you frequently encounter, especially those with multiple verb endings or multiple suffixes.

If an extension of the word ends in -ed, -ing, -ion, -ent or-ant, -ble, -ly, -ive, -ish, -ous, -ious, -eous, -or, -ar, -er, -eur, -ence or -ance, simple add the last letter of each extension to create a new unique identity. For plurals, add an extra 's'.

If the extension of the word ends in -ful, -less or -ness, add the first letter of the extension.

If there are multiple extensions, follow the above examples, as in thankfy for thankfully and thankg for thanking, but thankfn for thankfulness and thankln for thanklessness. Or how about errosy for erroneously and lawln for lawlessness?

Words with prefixes can be treated like any other word. So resus is okay for resuscitate, resusn for resuscitation, resusrs for resuscitators. Alternatively you can use prefix + hyphen + code and decide to either keep or remove the hyphen. A good example would be anti-cathm for anti-Catholicism, although if it is an expression you use frequently you might prefer something like aca instead. The technique is very flexible and can be tailored to individual needs.

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