Friday, August 31, 2007

Bulk Entries with the AutoCorrect.dot Utility

If you don't already have the useful AutoCorrect.dot backup tool, it can be downloaded at the following site:

http//word.mvps.org/Downloads/index.htm

You will find it very user friendly and self-explanatory. When you make your first backup, you will end up with a Microsoft Word document consisting of a simple table. To ensure that you are able to reimport your backup into Word, you must not change the heading ‘AutoCorrect Backup Document’, or the column headings, ‘Name’, ‘Value’, and 'RTF' (stands for Rich Text Format).

Columns
The first column, ‘Name’, is where you enter your shorthand codes for words and phrases. It is preferable to make your codes a single, short entry and avoid including any actual words, or you will get unwanted expansions.

The second column, ‘Value’, contains what you want the codes to expand to, and it could be a word, a phrase, a graphic, a table, a letter, a form, a chapter of a book and so on. The tool will accept all of these. The last column, ‘RTF’, indicates whether you want it formatted. ‘˜False’ stands for plain text and ‘True’ stands for formatted text. If your text expansion is greater than 255 characters, you must also store it as ‘True’. I have yet to encounter the size limit for a single entry, but no doubt it does exist. A lot will depend on your own computer’s capacity, I suspect.

Error Messages
The most important thing to remember about the entries is that there must be no empty cells and no cell must contain an unwanted space at the end of the entry. The tool will only accept legitimate spaces between words. If you attempt to reimport the backup into Word and it contains empty cells or empty rows, or any unwanted spaces, you will get an error message and the backup will stop.

Empty cells and rows are easily located and deleted. To eliminate all unwanted spaces, click on Show Invisibles then do a Find Next and Replace through the entire document and remove all trailing spaces at the end of entries, but leave intact all legitimate spaces between characters and words.

I generally don’t recommend phrases in the ‘Name’ column because of the risk of unwanted expansion, but there are acceptable exceptions. For example, I use i m to expand into I mean, simply because im already expands into I’m, but I could just as easily use ime.

The ‘Value’ column, on the other hand, is capable of storing very complex entries, provided that they don’t have that dastardly trailing space at the end of them.

Once you have a clean table, you are ready to make your own bulk entries. Leave the Show Invisibles on while you are doing them, so that you don’t reintroduce any unwanted trailing spaces.

Adding Extra Rows
Insert five blank rows at the bottom of the table. Highlight and copy those rows. Then every time you press control + v, you will add an additional five rows. You are now ready to spend a pleasant hour or so creating your own shorthand typing. For example, if you do work for a radiology department, enter codes for all of the common words and phrases that you encounter in your work, including proper nouns - the names of people, places, equipment, procedures, companies, drugs, treatment, etc. Don’t forget that if you want formatting, you will have to type ‘True’ in the last row. Just make sure that you don't have any blank rows left over when you finish.

You can now reimport the list back into the Microsoft Office programs using the AutoCorrect.dot tool. If you encounter an error message, take a note of where the backup procedure stopped and go back to check for unwanted spaces. The backup should proceed smoothly and quickly.

Adding Large or Formatted Entries
The next step now is to go ahead and create your own more complex entries for forms, tables, patient notes, formulae, sentences, etc. Give them an AutoCorrect code and don’t forget to save them as ‘True’ for a formatted or long entry. The general rule is that if you are planning to insert it into an existing document, use AutoCorrect. If it’s going to be the style for an entire document that you will be using frequently, you should save it as a template.

You will know when you have overloaded the normal template because:

(a) Microsoft Word will take much longer to load, and

(b) AutoCorrect will start to play up and you will get bizarre expansions.

One of the drawbacks of AutoCorrect may be that it saves all formatted text to the global Normal template, which is why it's advisable to delete entries you no longer use, to avoid overload.

Group Your Formatted Text Together
To make codes for formatted text easy to remember, I begin my entries with ‘my’ as in ‘mypic’, ‘myCV’, ‘mypricelist’ and so on. That way, if I forget the code, all I have to do is go instantly into the AutoCorrect dropdown window (press Alt then t then a), type 'my' into the Replace: field and I can then scroll down the list of all my large, formatted entries. If I am creating similar entries for a client, I will begin the code with their initials.

You will have spent an hour or two creating your formatted entries but it could save you hundreds of hours of work in future and the best part is that you can keep on adding to and deleting from the list. It will always be tailored to your current needs.

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.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Formatted Text Insertion into Microsoft Word

AutoCorrect will allow you to store multiple chunks of formatted text, either small or large. So let’s say, for example, that you want to set up a standard introduction for all your letters. You type something like the following in your chosen format:

John Brown
27 Arthurton Street
Kensington Gdns Vic 3030
Ph: (03) 98721301
E-mail: johnbrown@aol.com
Insert>date and time

Dear Sir/Madam

If you then highlight all the text, you can enter a simple code such as ‘myintro’ and Bob’s your uncle. You can do the same with a standard conclusion to correspondence and give it a similar code such as ‘myexit’. The beauty with this system is that your fingers don’t have to leave the standard keyboard that you’re most comfortable with anyway, and you can type the codes on-the-fly. The trick is to make sure that your codes are short, follow a simple pattern of logic consistent with all your other code styles, and don't require any effort to remember.

There is a widespread belief that AutoCorrect will only store up to 255 characters. This only applies if you save it as plain text. My biggest genuine AutoCorrect entry contains 5,500 characters because it is saved as formatted text. There does not appear to be any size limit to what AutoCorrect can save. Nor is AutoCorrect limited to codes, as some people seem to think. It is usually sufficient to make the first few letters or words of your entry the code (minus spaces between words), and it will expand to the full text/table automatically, in the same way that AutoText does. Or you can make it self-explanatory, such as “mypricelist” or “myreceipt”. The formatted text is saved in the normal template, which has to be backed up regularly anyway.

Why I don't recommend spaces in codes
With AutoCorrect it is necessary to avoid the possibility of unwanted expansion. If I used 'my list' as a code, can you imagine the trouble I would get myself into every time I typed those words? Keeping spaces out of codes is an easy way to avoid unwanted expansion.

Size limits with AutoCorrect
Just to test the size capacity of AutoCorrect, I highlighted an entire chapter of a book, complete with 23 TIFF images. The size was 25,000 KB. In AutoCorrect I gave it the code 'chap3', saved it and opened a new document. When I typed the code the entire chapter (including all pictures) reproduced itself in a matter of a second or two. Now I wouldn’t normally make such a big, single AutoCorrect entry because the downside is that Word then took about 30 seconds to load and open initially because of the new size of the normal template, whereas it usually loads and opens in a few seconds. If you chuck everything at the normal template then you have to expect some trade-off in load-up time. It was a pretty impressive test result all the same. I guess the answer is that you can save most of the things that you are likely to encounter in your work as codes for instant insertion.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Speed Typing Common Phrases

AutoCorrect is brilliant as a text expander for phrases and sentences. However, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here. Basically you just use the first letter of each word in the phrase to form the code, and there are already zillions of people using it in that way and for that purpose.

What I will do instead is jump right in with my own list of the common AutoCorrect phrases beginning with the letter ‘a’. In later posts I will supply lists to cover the rest of the alphabet.

Every time I encounter a common phrase I add it to my AutoCorrect codes and the list below is the result. If a common phrase beginning with ‘a’ isn’t on the list then it’s because in eight years of using AutoCorrect, it never cropped up.

You will notice, however, that they are very conversational. I deliberately haven’t included any phrases or expressions specific to my work, or to any particular client or field. That's because you don't need or want to know the phrases that are common in my work. You only need to know how to create your own.

I suggest you enter only those phrases from the list that you think you are likely to use, then prepare a practice exercise for yourself. At the top of a Word document type out all your ‘a’ phrases as a single paragraph. Then as you read them out aloud to yourself, type along using the AutoCorrect codes. Repeat the practice sessions while increasing your speaking speed. After you have repeated the exercise a few times you will find that you are typing all the codes quickly and automatically. NB: there are a couple of ‘must have’ words in there as well. Plus I have put an asterisk next to the ones that I personally use quite a lot.

............................AutoCorrect........Expanded Text
...................................abm.................a bit more *
...................................aby..................anybody *
...................................acty.................actually *
...................................aly...................already *
...................................aoe..................anyone *
...................................afa...................as far as
...................................afaic................as far as I'm concerned *
...................................afaik................as far as I know *
...................................afayc...............as far as you're concerned
...................................afda.................a few days ago
...................................agdo................a great deal of
...................................ahoalo..............a hell of a lot of
...................................aimb.................as I mentioned before *
...................................ais....................as I said
...................................aisb..................as I said before
...................................aiws..................as I was saying *
...................................al......................at least *
...................................alb....................a little bit

...................................ala....................as long as
...................................albm..................a little bit more
...................................alo.................... a lot of
...................................alop...................a lot of people
...................................alott...................a lot of the time
...................................alt......................a long time
...................................altog.... .... ........altogether *
...................................alty....................alternatively
...................................alw.....................a little while
...................................alwa...................a little while ago

...................................ama...................a moment ago *
...................................amap.................as much as possible *
...................................amer..................America
...................................amern................American
...................................amerns..............Americans
...................................amt....................amount *
...................................ano....................another *
...................................anot...................a number of times
...................................ao......................and/or *
...................................aot.....................as opposed to *
...................................aoas............. .....all of a sudden
...................................ar.......................all right *
...................................asa.......... ..........as soon as
...................................asap........... .......as soon as possible *
...................................asf..................... and so forth
...................................aso.....................and so on
...................................asoasf.......... ......and so on and so forth

...................................atb......................across the board
...................................ated....................at the end of the day
...................................ag.......................anything *
...................................atge....................anything else
...................................atlo......................along the lines of
...................................atm......................at the moment *
...................................ap........................at present
...................................atpit.....................at this point in time
...................................atpt......................at the present time

...................................ats.......................at this stage
...................................atsot....................and that sort of thing
...................................atst......................at the same time
...................................att........................at the time
...................................aust......................Australia
...................................austn....................Australian
...................................austns..................Australians
...................................avlt.......................a very long time
...................................awy......................anyway *
...................................awa......................as well as
...................................ayk.......................as you know
...................................ays.......................as you said
...................................ayst......................are you saying that
...................................ayw......................anywhere *
...................................ayws.....................as you were saying

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

All about AutoCorrect

Speed Typing for Slow Typists
If you take just a few minutes to read this blog, you will master the basics of AutoCorrect for speed typing, and there’s a good chance that your typing will never be the same again.

If you adopt even some of the techniques explained in this blog, you won’t suddenly be typing at 250 wpm, but you will quickly increase your typing speed by as much as 20--30% and the good news is that there is nothing to master.

If you suffer from a disability such as arthritis or RSI, the real benefit is that AutoCorrect dramatically reduces the number of keystrokes and that can be more important than speed.


Save Time and Make More Money
In today’s busy world, when there is so much pressure on our time, using AutoCorrect extensively in your typing makes a lot of sense. Once you have been using it for even just a couple of months, it’s impossible to revert back to typing in the old way. It is such a huge timesaver that in future, many employers may well consider the use of AutoCorrect a prerequisite for employment.

If you have one of the earlier versions of Microsoft Office (2000/XP/2003) the simplest and quickest way to produce your own keyboard shorthand is to backup your AutoCorrect entries using the AutoCorrect tool
AutoCorrect.dot. When you view the list in Microsoft Word, you will see that what you have is a basic table. You must not change the headings in any way but what you can do is add hundreds of rows to the bottom of the table and fill them with codes for words and phrases that are common to your work. Then reimport the backup table back into Microsoft Word and you will be up and running with your own keyboard shorthand.

AutoCorrect and the English Lexicon
Dictionaries are a part of our everyday life. To really understand a language, however, we need to look at its lexicon. A lexicon is just an alphabetical list of words and it reveals the underlying structure of any language, or the building blocks if you like.

Languages are built up over thousands of years and there is a tendency to make the words we commonly use very short and of preferably one syllable. Any list of most common English words, for example, will include: me, you, he, she, I, a, the, am, on, in, up, down, in, out, arm, leg, head, dog, cat and so on. If you look at a list of common words in any other language, I have no doubt that a similar rule applies. I speak here only of the English language because it is my first language.

The less frequently we use a word, the more tolerant we are about the number of syllables it contains and the less inclined we are to shorten it -- but the process still goes on. Some recent examples include TV (or tele), fridge, PC, phone, car, bus, etc.

Words that are not quite so common are much more likely to be of two or more syllables. That’s fine as far as it goes, but when you then add verb tenses, prefixes, suffixes and so on, you can end up with words that are quite cumbersome.

We can see from any lexicon that a simple ‘stem’ word can produce some very long words indeed, when you add on all the appropriate extensions. Writing or typing those long words can be tedious to put it mildly and it’s only natural that we would look at ways to shorten the typing process.

The computer solution is text expansion. There are a number of text expanders on the market but the system used in Microsoft’s AutoCorrect utility is still the best.

To use AutoCorrect successfully, you must first take the time to learn how to be an accurate touch typist. That much at least hasn’t changed. Otherwise your constant mistyping will produce some very annoying expansions. The other thing you will still need to do is create your own AutoCorrect list. You will also need to grab a copy of the English lexicon and discover for yourself the hidden key to the English language.

Instant Speed Typing with AutoCorrect
The first thing you notice about the lexicon is that the bulk of its ‘root’ words, be they nouns, verbs, adjectives, or whatever, can be uniquely identified by their first few letters, commonly the first four or five letters but frequently less, occasionally more.

If the ‘root’ word then has a variety of suffixes or verb endings attached to the end of it to form a list of new words based upon it, then they can be uniquely identified by attaching the last letter of the suffix or verb ending.

For example, if there is a word ending in ‘ing’ then just adding the letter ‘g’ is sufficient to create a new unique identity. If it has a combination of endings, such as ‘ing’ and ‘ly’, then the new unique identity is created by added ‘gy’ Sometimes though, it's sufficient just to add the letter ‘y’. With plurals you add the letter ‘s’.

That sounds clumsy I know, but an example from my own AutoCorrect list will best demonstrate what I mean. Let’s take the word acknowledge, which can be uniquely identified by its first three letters -- ack. So we have:

........................AutoCorrect Code..............Expanded Text
..................................ack.............................acknowledge
..................................ackd...........................acknowledged
..................................ackg...........................acknowledging
..................................ackt............................acknowledgment

..................................ackts..........................acknowledgments

This list includes the five most common extensions of acknowledge that you are likely to encounter but you could, if you wish, add another three:

..................................ackr...........................acknowledger
..................................ackrs.........................acknowledgers
..................................acke..........................acknowledgable


And that’s it. That really is it. By using this or a similar technique most of the long words in the English language can be reduced to short words. You have just mastered it in a nanosecond.

Use the First Three Letters for Your Most Commonly Used Words
Look I’ll be honest, complications can occur. Let’s take the word inquire. It takes the first six letters to achieve a unique identity because the next root word in the lexicon is inquisition. This is how I have chosen to handle it:

........................AutoCorrect Code................Expanded Text
...................................inq...............................inquire

...................................inqs.............................inquires
...................................inqd.............................inquired
...................................inqg.............................inquiring
...................................inqy.............................inquiry

...................................inqys...........................inquiries
...................................inqr.............................inquirer
...................................inqrs...........................inquirers

In other words, I have chosen the first three letters to uniquely identify it because its only competition, inquisition and its extensions, are words that I use less often. When I do encounter them, I use inquis as the root.

Don’t Let Your Shorthand/Abbreviation Form a ‘Real’ Word
Another complication occurs when the abbreviation forms a ‘real’ word. You will have to come up with another, similar, alternative, otherwise every time you type that word you will get an annoying extension.

More about Suffixes
The suffixes -ness, -less and -ful can introduce variations. An example using the words though and thought would be:

........................AutoCorrect Code................Expanded Text
...................................tho...............................though
...................................thot..............................thought
...................................thots............................thoughts
...................................thotf.............................thoughtful

...................................thotfy...........................thoughtfully
...................................thotfn...........................thoughtfulness
...................................thotl.............................thoughtless
...................................thotly...........................thoughtlessly

...................................thotln...........................thoughtlessness

As you can see, it has becomes necessary to switch to the first letter of the suffix for some of them. Words that use combinations of the three suffixes -ness, -less and -ful do form their own subgroup but the rules that applies to them are still very basic and repetitive -- and very easy to master.

Prefixes
So far I haven’t mentioned prefixes, such as re, un, in, anti, non, intra and inter. The most common words that you encounter in your work can be dealt with on an individual basis. Thus for me, the shorthand for antidiscrimination is antid because I find it easy to remember and type automatically.

There will be many words beginning with prefixes such as re, un, and non, that you use so frequently that it will be worth you while to treat them as you would any other word. A good example from my own list would be unf for unfortunate and unfy for unfortunately and these two words would be in my list of top 100 most common words so I have kept them as short as possible.

The beginning rule, however, is to use the prefix + hyphen + abbreviation. For example, if I type pre-adole it expands to pre-adolescence.

If we didn’t have the hyphen, it would be necessary to create thousands of new entries in AutoCorrect, in order to include the words with prefixes. By using the hyphen, it is only necessary to add prefixes to your existing abbreviations. You can then quickly backspace and remove the hyphen if you wish.

For example, you could type pre-hospn for pre-hospitalisation and decide to leave it as it is, or type pre-dispn for pre-disposition, and decide to take the hyphen out.

Other examples from my own list include unp for unpopular and unpd for unpopulated because I type those words fairly frequently. On the other hand, I use popu for popular and popud for populated. Note that I couldn’t use pop for the shorthand root word because it is a ‘real’ word in its own right. That’s the great thing about AutoCorrect. It’s flexible enough to allow for individuality. You can come up with your own gee-whiz-bang list that suits your individual needs.

Backing Up Your AutoCorrect Entries
Your own unique AutoCorrect list for your Microsoft Office documents will be stored in an MSO (number) .acl file and you will need to back it up regularly so that you don’t lose it. With the Australian version of Microsoft Office 2000 the .acl file is MSO3081 for the Australian Language.

For other versions and other languages, add a batch of entries to AutoCorrect then do a Windows Search on .acl (stands for AutoCorrect List). You will find several files, each one allocated to a different language, such as US (American) or International English. The file that keeps getting bigger every time you add AutoCorrect entries is obviously the one you are using and you will need to back up from time to time.

If entries have been saved as formatted text, they will be saved in the Normal template.A very useful way to backup your AutoCorrect entries, however, is with the AutoCorrect Backup tool and there is a link to it on this blog.

Why Bother?
Most people speak at about 120-150 words a minute. I can’t type that fast and there’s a good chance that you can’t either, which is why when you are typing notes from a lecturer, it is helpful to use this form of English shorthand. It uses an existing word processing tool and its basic principles can be mastered in seconds, with the added bonus that you can tailor it to your own needs. You will type much faster, particularly after you have been using codes for the common long words you encounter. You will have dozens or hundreds of them that you use frequently in your work or studies. You can add them to the list in a bulk batch or one at a time as you encounter them.

The abbreviations are so simple that they have their place in text messaging as well:

h ackd tht i was writg and spelg evg corry. (34 characters)

The only difference is that in a normal word doc, it will expand automatically to:

He acknowledged that I was writing and spelling everything correctly. (60 characters)

What about Spelling Errors?
AutoCorrect, as its name indicates, was created as a tool to automatically correct your spelling errors as you type. It can still do that. The two functions, spelling correction and text expansion, work seamlessly together and both can be tailored to your own needs.

If you would like to know more about the power of AutoCorrect, please visit my website, or you can e-mail me (see my profile). If you have any comments, questions, answers, tips, tricks and techniques for getting the best out of the AutoCorrect tool, I will be updating this blog regularly from now on - and of course I would love to receive a comment or two (wouldn't we all?)