Text expansion is a powerful tool for simplifying repetitive typing. Think about how often you type the same things repeatedly:
- When you respond to someone, you type your phone number or mailing address so they can reach you in a specific way
- When you email a document to a client, you include boilerplate language like disclaimers or a request to not distribute the information
- When you reach out to someone new in an email, you give a two sentence introduction of yourself and your company
- When you receive an email with a common question, you type a standard response like a troubleshooting procedure or a note that you need to forward their message on to someone else
With text expansion, you can type this language once and then use an abbreviation to save yourself time (and typos!) in the future. When you type the abbreviation, the text expander simply replaces it with your defined text block.
There are many dedicated text expansion programs (I use TextExpander), but there are also built-in text expansion capabilities in Microsoft Word and the Mac OS X operating system.
Below are some concrete examples of how I use text expansion. In all of these examples, you’ll notice that my abbreviations start with a semicolon (;). I chose the semicolon because no natural language will ever start with a semicolon, so I don’t have to worry about accidentally expanding an abbreviation when I didn’t mean to, and the semicolon is right under my pinky so it’s easy to type.
Conference Calls: I often have to set up ad hoc conference calls. Unfortunately, I forget our conference call number. Instead of looking it up every time, I simply set up an abbreviation “;conf”, which expands to “Please call in to our conference line at (555) 555-5555. At the prompt, enter 55555# to join the call.” Now I can easily send the number to people via email or instant message.
Feedback: I learned this trick while teaching undergrads, and I find it works well for professional training as well as mentoring team members. Often times, I need to give similar feedback to people. When I was grading student essays, my most frequent comments were that the examples needed to be better developed and that the student’s language was not precise enough on a particular point. In professional training, I need to tell many students to be less wordy in role plays. When mentoring team members, there are usually one or two key issues that I want to target.
Let’s take the example of wordy role plays. I can define an abbreviation like “;concise” that expands to “Remember that we discussed how good communication is 1) clear and 2) concise. In your role play, you could improve both by tightening up your language. There were a couple of situations when you seemed to talk around the point rather than stating the issue clearly and concisely. In your next attempt, try limiting yourself to one direct sentence when you talk about”. I can type the abbreviation, fill in the specific example for that student, and email that feedback to him or her.
If I define a total of 3 to 5 abbreviations for the most common issues, I can quickly generate personalized feedback for students because I only need to fill in the details for each student. I don’t need to spent time typing to re-teach the content.
Common Phrases: As an instructional designer, I end up typing the phrase, “By the end of this module, you will be able to” at least a couple of times a day. I use it in course materials, PowerPoint decks, proposals, and blog posts. I’ve replaced that phrase with the abbreviation “;modobj”. Now, instead of taking five seconds to type that phrase (and having to check that I didn’t accidentally mistype “By the end of htis module…”), I can create the whole phrase in less than a second.
While the savings from ;modobj seem small, it’s enough to make a difference in the flow of my work. The phrase “By the end of this module, you will be able to” is a single chunk of thought in my brain, and as soon as I know that I’m typing it I am ready to move on to the next chunk. If I have to wait four more seconds for my fingers to catch up, I can lose my momentum. If I take an extra ten seconds because I get to the end of the phrase, realize I mistyped htis again, hit the delete key a bunch and retype the phrase correctly, I’m no longer thinking about the next idea. Those interruptions add up.
The other thing to remember is that it’s not just a four second savings once or twice a day. This is just one of my abbreviations for frequent phrases. I have a whole personal library of instructional design phrases that I have developed over the years. Those phrases together save me fifteen minutes of typing a day. That’s equivalent to eliminating a full meeting from my schedule, every single day!