I don't know if everyone would like this, but it works well for me.

I double a letter for "on the," "and the," and "at the." My others aren't double letters, but if I were starting over, maybe I'd make them so.

Choose the letters you like. Mine are as such:

oo = on the
gg = and the
qq = at the
ofth = of the
withe = within the
althe = along the
wwt = with the
abth = about the

Of course, many phrases with these go longer, which is better, but you'd be surprised at all the sentences where you just need the two words.

How about you? Have a system for these teeny words?

PS: I forgot from the - I use fy, works great!

PSS: Until I started working yesterday, I also forgot these! :eek

unth = under the
arth = around the

Ah, yes, breaking from straight first letter or first two letter abbreviation systems is a very good idea, as long as you set up a system for your exceptions to the standard system. That way you will still know automatically what the abbreviation is for many words and phrases without memorizing or having to check advisories.

I don't have time for a really long series of posts this morning, but I've been meaning to put some up on general theories of expansions and the whys and wherefores behind them. The first thing I did when I started transcribing on a computer, and realized I needed to do something a little different with letters in order to get a lot of AutoCorrects that were easy to derive on the fly and didn't conflict, was to analyze letter frequencies in an online medical dictionary that allowed for * and ? wildcard searches. (Note, I do not recommend using AutoCorrect for an expander - I had no other expander at that point and didn't even know that there were other expanders, since I had just gotten online and hadn't searched my way to MT resources and the online community yet.)

Below I have pasted the results of the analysis of those 72,000+ words from my long-ago spreadsheet, plus concatenations of the frequencies for the abab and abcz systems I have since found that many people follow, with each group sorted in ascending order of frequency of appearance of the letter in that word position. The first thing you will see if you look at those frequencies is why I do not use "j" as my abbreviation for the very common word ending "tion", as several of the classic systems apparently do. "J" is one of a few uniquely useful, very-low-frequency letters, and it is therefore unwise to use it as the abbreviation for a very common word ending, since that will change it into a high-frequency last letter in abbreviations using a standard abab or abcz system. The base abbreviations you create will already need to be semi-unique, so one should use very common letters to indicate ending variations for those bases such as -s, -ing, ed, tion, etc., as that will not create any extra duplicates in your expansion short forms.

Analyzing statistical frequency of occurence of letters in various positions in words gives you an idea what letters would be best to use for preceding and/or following other abbreviations to indicate classes of abbreviations for muscles, blood vessels, drugs, addresses, names, etc. It also lets you see what letters are low frequency overall and therefore most likely to be of use in a subsystem of more unusual abbreviations for common words (such as Harrie's use of "y" to stand for "the"). You should consider the rules and methods of expansion of your primary basic system and expander of choice and then use frequency analysis to make intelligent choices about your personal add-ons to the system. :tonks

Merriam Webster Medical Dictionary: Letter Frequency in Words (72,000+ words)

Last Letter
*j 7
*q 15
*z 31
*v 50
*u 79
*f 115
*b 153
*w 155
*o 279
*p 331
*k 353
*x 386
*i 572
*h 643
*m 2039
*g 2490
*r 2801
*t 3004
*l 3734
*d 4119
*c 4206
*a 4296
*y 4948
*n 5065
*e 9844
*s 22714

First Letter
y* 77
x* 153
z* 233
q* 248
j* 266
w* 620
k* 693
u* 794
v* 1434
g* 2079
f* 2193
n* 2210
o* 2237
r* 2619
b* 2772
l* 2790
i* 3214
t* 3538
e* 3701
d* 3937
h* 4241
m* 5367
a* 6184
s* 6346
c* 6910
p* 7840

Second Letter
?j 45
?k 79
?z 95
?q 103
?w 148
?f 149
?g 267
?v 434
?b 468
?d 626
?x 853
?m 1399
?s 1579
?t 1670
?c 1675
?p 1731
?l 3377
?h 3607
?y 4147
?n 4511
?u 4539
?r 5829
?i 6461
?o 7492
?a 9182
?e 12143

Third Letter
??q 88
??z 92
??j 121
??w 218
??k 220
??x 541
??v 701
??f 890
??h 1129
??y 1542
??b 1666
??g 1684
??u 2273
??d 2466
??m 3220
??i 3590
??p 4067
??c 4393
??s 4428
??a 4908
??e 5020
??n 5227
??l 5245
??o 5314
??t 6550
??r 6787

abab Frequency
j 311
z 328
q 351
w 768
k 772
x 1006
v 1868
f 2342
g 2346
b 3240
y 4224
d 4563
t 5208
u 5333
l 6167
n 6721
m 6766
h 7848
s 7925
r 8448
c 8585
p 9571
i 9675
o 9729
a 15366
e 15844

abcz Frequency
j 439
z 451
q 454
w 1141
k 1345
x 1933
v 2619
f 3347
b 5059
g 6520
u 7685
h 9620
y 10714
d 11148
m 12025
i 13837
p 13969
t 14762
l 15146
o 15322
n 17013
c 17184
r 18036
a 24570
e 30708
s 35067

Sorry for the late reply, Tonks! Working all day!

Errrr.......ahem. Your long-ago calculation, before you worked your way to MT resources or knew about all the expanders.......in other words, you were a thinking, analyzing, genius MT even then! I'm sorry, but I'm blown away by this! Wow!! How cool is that?!

Okay, I'm over that part now. :lol

Geeez, that is so neat. I think I can analyze that when I have the time and make myself some more unusual ones that work just fine and dandy! I actually use only a few single letter abbreviations, and I use "j" for the word "that." Anyway, I usually just come up with these strange ones when I just really need something a lot and I need a really, sort of "singled-out" abbreviation. Naturally, the less used letters or a strange combo always seems best. I do recommend that for everybody. It doesn't have to make any sense if it's a system to you! But I've always done it without really thinking. I think I'll start really thinking!

Thanks for the post. I still can't get over it. Anyway, I really appreciate it.

Have you looked into the Singles glossary in Instant Text where you can get words or phrases with a single key? Yes, you can put phrases on the Words side. This glossary automatically loads with IT -- you do not have to Include it. Go to Options/Singles tab to see which singles glossary is loading.

You can edit the Singles glossary in Notepad or Wordpad where you can alter the order in which words appear. You are not restricted to using the actual first letter of the word or phrase. For example, use "z" for "the patient" to make use of an unusual letter. How many times a day do we type "and" -- I hit "a" and my marker key. Go through the alphabet and put your favorite word on top, setting your lines to show subsequent single words or phrases.

Cheryl

You do have to be careful when using the singles in IT words that you are actually getting a return on your investment, though, since all but the first one will require that you strike a number key, several shifts, or a control key to activate it.

By the way, Harrie, I wasn't all that much of a genius. I, too, started making up lots of abbreviations on the fly, and eventually ended tearing up the whole set up and going back at it in a more systematic manner in order to get the most mileage out of the shorter expansions with the least conflicts. I also danced marker keys around several times.

These days you can find a number of excellent letter and word frequency analyses on the internet, including tables of the most common 1,000 to 3,000 word families and tables of the 2,000 to 10,000 most common words in English writing. If someone is just starting to create an expansion system, it would probably pay them to download some of those, set them up in Excel tables, select out the words likely to be useful in MT work, and make up a careful, consistent system of abbreviations that covers all the high-frequency words.

Of course, when I finally had a sort of system hammered out, I moved to IT, which has a lot of advantages, but really annoyed me that it didn't allow for numbers in the first position or symbols anywhere in the shorts. Well, the numbers I guess I can understand, since they are used to allow a faster method of activating choices in the advisories once you start memorizing positions for things. The lack of symbols still bugs the heck out of me, though, since I had a great system for pulling addresses, hospital names, patient demographics, etc., using symbol prefixes to separate those sets of abbreviations out from the mass. They are large databases, but you don't key things in from them that often in any one report, so the extra shift stroke was well worth it for being able to just wap in what I wanted without looking. I also liked having standard prefix and suffix shorts set up with ' and ; marker keys that I could throw in when I didn't have exactly the short I needed.

Then I had a system for putting symbols at the end of header shorts that let me drop in bold, italic, underline, small caps, or any combination thereof without having to think about it - just hit the standard abbreviation plus the symbol for the format or combination of formatting I wanted to see. I find it hard to remember the numbers I had to assign in IT as opposed to the symbols, probably because I have a mind that does numbers poorly and visual icons well, plus there are fewer numbers than symbols, so I ended up short a few codes. I didn't have to think that @ was for c@ps, + was for +itle case, ! was for !talic, - was for underlined, = was for bold and underlined, # was for italic, bold, and underlined, etc. I still have to stop and look at the keys to figure out that now 2 will get me caps, 1 will get me italic, etc. (When I say my mind does numbers poorly, I mean really poorly - I have to walk around with my new phone number written down for myself for at least 5 years after I change it. :harrie) I think I'm just going to give up and write macros that run off the symbol keys on a menu in Word, and will back up and change the formatting for the line.

I realize the symbol keys can all be used as marker keys in IT, but really, how many marker keys do you need in life, especially since you have to hit an escape sequence any time you want a marker key to type what it was originally designed to? I'd rather be able to designate my two markers of choice and use the rest of the keys in my shorts.

Ah, well, we adjust, sort of; we b**** and moan, frequently; that's life in the MT business. :tonks

Sorry, guys. My mind is too befuddled to remember to hit a marker key for this and a space bar for that, etc. Guess that is why IT and I never have and never will get along, plus the fact that IT will not work in the program I work in even though it is a windows program. Shorthand is much better for that. I have heard that if you play with IT for about six months, you will eventually get up to speed, but I already have one foot on the banana peel and not sure that I want to give up six months of high production just to learn to use special keys for this and other special keys for something else. Learning word was enough of a hassle after knowing WP51 upside down and backwards.

I will just have to stick to my goofy combinations for shortcuts that I devised by borrowing ideas from various people and creating a number of them on the fly because every time I typed them, that was the shortcut that would come to mind.

So, I will leave you all to your IT. Good luck.

Oh, it's definitely differents strokes for different folks in the expander business, Mary Anne, and Shorthand does have a lot of appealing features as well.

I started using AutoCorrect and adding j to entries for short expansions and q to longer ones, so I wouldn't inadvertently trigger an expansion I didn't want, and I could also get two different versions of expansion from the same key combo. So I was hitting a "code key" plus the spacebar for my expansions, and I had switched "code keys" once already when I figured out my original choices weren't the greatest. I think that made the transition to IT's separate expander keys for phrases and words easier for me than it is for many. I just had to again get new "code keys" into my fingers and learn not to hit the spacebar after a "code key". There are things I don't like about IT, such as the inability to use symbols in short forms, but I personally find the trade off worth it for the continuations and glossary building from previously typed documents.

Like I said, though, YM may most definitely vary. That's why I like the exchanges on these boards that get a lot of different points of view and resulting preferences out there for people to think about. :tonks