Take Advantage of a Text Expander- MacLife

Take Advantage of a Text Expander

By: Deborah Shadovitz

MacLife.com Community Blogger Deborah Shadovitz explains how TypeIt4Me boosts her productivity and saves her sanity.

TypeIt4Me provides text-expansion options galore.

I'm a writer, so I type an awful lot. Since everyone who is reading this post is using a computer in some way, and thus likely to be typing, I figure it would be nice of me to share some of my best typing tips. Let's start with this one...

No matter what keyboard you use, or what layout, or where you are typing, it's likely that there are several phrases you type several times a day. Your name, for example. Or your address. Or the closing of a letter. Or a response to your eBay sales queries, or the word "thank you."

Each of your redundant phrases, no matter how long or how many convoluted intercaps (i.e., Mac|Life or MacGathering or QuickTime), provides you with an opportunity to not have to hit as many keys if you use a good typing expander app. I have been using Ettore Software's TypeIt4Me ($27) for many years and can highly recommend it. (I am also a long-time fan of SpellCatcher, which is the best darn universal spelling checker/fixer and also does typing. TypeIt4Me is more feature-rich, though, in auto-typing features.)

How TypeIt4Me works:

Whenever you've typed a phrase that you know you'll have to type again and again, type it, then select all of it's text (multi lines is fine), then copy that text (Edit > Copy). Then choose Add a Clipping... from the menu that TypeIt4Me puts in your menubar. You'll see your text there. Just click in the abbreviation field and enter a unique key combo that'll be the future trigger. After that, you'll just type that abbreviation and your trigger (the spacebar or such) and your entire phrase will type out.

For example, here are a few of mine:

> mya gives me my name, address, phone, email address and URL
> myp types my phone number
> myc types "Cell: xxx-xxx-xxxx" (x's being my phone number, of course)

> myu gives me "<http://www.Shadovitz.com>"
> ds gives me "Deborah Shadovitz" and dss types out "Deborah S. Shadovitz" and so on for my own info.

Then, I have one for each phrase I type to editors often. When I wrote the GoLive 5 Bible (glb gave me that) I had one that typed "Files tab of the Site Window" and so on, because I wanted those phrases to be consistent throughout the book (and because I was sick of typing them).

I also use TypeIt4Me for words I can never recall how to spell. For example, I have an abbreviation to give me the word "hors d'oeuvres" and tch types "tchotchkes" for me. (It's a bitch to look those words up when you can't spell 'em!) And, I use it for words I mis-type as well. I enter the way I mis-type a word as the expansion and the correct spelling as the expanded text.

TypeIt4Me can also do fun things such as creating styled text so hb types out the words "Happy Birthday" in large text, each character another color. You can even have an abbreviation insert a photo for you!

If you're wondering whether you'll forget too many of your abbreviations, well, I sure do. But I have my TypeIt4Me menu set to show me the abbreviation and the start of the text. I don't have to remember them all. Instead, I can click the menu and drag down to choose my phrase (and remind myself of the abbreviation).

TypeIt4Me saves me time, helps prevent hand pain, and helps save what little sanity I have left since all this tech stuff started taking up so much of my brain's memory space. It's the original dedicated typing expander and gives you the best value for the buck - or quid, or whatever you're apt to spend on your Mac stuff.

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Submitted by LJB in Connecticut (not verified) on Thu, 2007-08-09 08:40.

I'm very pleased to see this article about TypeIt4Me, because I consider it an indispensable tool. I use it for many of the things Deborah uses it for, but I use it to just reduce my typing time.

Up front, I'll acknowledge I can be a little anal, and my TypeIt4Me shortcuts list certainly demonstrates that - it's got a couple of hundred items in it.

In addition to long phrases, addresses, etc., I use it for everyday routine words. Consider the following sentence: Wn I wnt t k wt ti it is, I lk at my watch. TypeIt4Me expands that into, When I want to know what time it is, I look at my watch.

It gets worse; every verb I put into TypeIt4Me is there four times, as in lk/look, lkd/looked, lkg/looking, and wlk/will look. I used to have a fifth verb entry - lks/looks - but the new version of TypeIt4Me offers basic plurals as an automatic option. Of course, that option only adds an "s" to the root word - if you have "wm" as a shortcut for "woman" and you type "wms", you get "womans", not "women." For plurals that change the root word (adding an "e" is a common example), you have to enter them as separate shortcuts.

However, the bottom line is, TypeIt4Me doesn't just help me with words I miss-spell, convoluted phraseology, frequently-typed addresses, etc; it mks v wrg ta I d evy day g a lot fstr (it makes the writing I do every day go a lot faster.)

You may have noticed "v" expands into "the" and wonder what the rationale was for that. Well, "the" is the word we type more often than almost any other, so I simply chose "v" as the shortcut because it's sitting there right next to my left index finger on the keyboard - it's convenient.

The reason I mention it is to show you can use TypeIt4Me in any conceivable way, with only one real guiding principal - it has to make sense to you.

I know, you may already have glazed-over eyes and a headache at the idea of creating a system that will help you remember over two hundred shortcuts. First, I already said, I'm a little anal, and that helps. Second, don't worry about the ones you can't remember; if you don't use them often enough to remember them, you don't need them.

One caveat: TypeIt4Me does its magic through some sort of a cut-and-paste scheme, and I've noticed that when PC people reply to my emails, in some cases my original email has question marks following every TypeIt4Me word expansion I used, instead of the space that should have been there. I haven't figured that one out, but it means that until the TypeIt4Me people can fix that, I can't use it in my emails, which constitutes a lot of my typing. That's a disappointment.

However, having said that, give it a try - once you've set it up, it can be a great time-saver for people who do a lot of typing!

LJB in Connecticut

Take Advantage of a Text Expander

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