Thursday, September 13, 2007

Would, Could and Should

I will just briefly cover the past tenses 'would' and 'could', which you will certainly encounter frequently. 'Should' is much less common but it’s part of the group, so it makes sense to deal with it at the same time. These words and their extensions are deserving of codes so you might like to consider bulk-adding them to your AutoCorrect entries and these are my suggestions:


..................................wd................ would
..................................cd................. could
..................................shd................should
..................................wdt............... wouldn't
..................................cdt................ couldn't
..................................shdt............. .shouldn't
..................................wdth............. wouldn't have
..................................cdth.............. couldn't have
..................................shdth.............shouldn't have


Now you could go on from there and add codes for the 'had' and 'been' extensions, such as:

..................................cdhh...............could have had
..................................wdthb............ wouldn’t have been


and so on, which would involve adding another 'h' or another 'b' to the end of your existing codes to form new codes. Notice that you start moving into phrases, you start to add the first letter only of each new word. Once you have developed a simple technique that suits you, it's a good idea to stick to it.

I tend to find, though, that short codes work best because you can remember them and type them automatically. If you have to hesitate to remember the code, then it’s much quicker simply to type the words. So you might prefer:

..................................chh...............could have had
..................................whb.............. would have been
..................................shh............... should have had
..................................wnhh............ would not have had

and so on. To complete the exercise, open a blank document and give yourself some practice exercises typing out the 'would', 'could', and 'should' words and phrases. Then read them aloud over and over, while typing along with your codes. Quickly start increasing your reading speed until you are automatically typing the codes literally 'on the fly'.

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