A little while back I posted some lists showing frequency of occurrence of
the various letters of the alphabet in various positions in words in both
general and medical vocabularies, and mentioned that I had used frequencies
to help me in setting up some of my expander system. Just how does one use
information like that?

If you look at the table for frequency of initial letters in words , you
see that the following are the least frequent initial letters: y, x, z, q,
j, w, and k. However, in an expander system we have not only single words
but also many phrases, which are generally abbreviated by using the first
letter of each word. Therefore we need to also consider whether any of these
infrequent initial letters overall occur at the start of some very frequent
words, and would have a high frequency in phrase abbreviations. I won't
bore you by posting lists of the 100 and 500 most common English words and
the analysis of initial letters in that subset of the language. Suffice it
to say that although w is a very uncommon first letter overall, it is
nevertheless the first letter in a lot of very high-frequency English words
(who, which, what, when, was, were, etc.). So we need to drop that from our
list of good suspects for starting abbreviations that won't have much
likelihood of duplication. That leaves us with y, x, z, q, j, and k.
However it is very common to abbreviate ex words using x in expander
systems, and I actually use x and xx in a lot of abbreviations for female as
well, so scratch that one. Now we are down to y, q, z, j, and k. Y is a
very infrequent first letter, and will not show up in phrases too often
overall, however it is the first letter in year and yesterday, and it also
occurs in intermediate word positions much more often than q, z, j, and k,
which are infrequent in all positions. The conclusion is that these last
four would be the best code keys to use to put a lot of things at our
fingertips, and that the best way to use them would be to double them and
start our shorts with qq, zz, jj, or kk. If we add one additional letter,
each double-letter code set will give us 26 unique abbreviations. If we add
two additional letters, we will have over 600 more probably unique
abbreviations for doing things besides abbreviating words and phrases.

Now we come to the last part of our analysis, which is which ones of these
combos will be fastest and most convenient to use. I think most of us would
agree that the home row keys j and k should probably be assigned to things
we will want to do most frequently, followed by q, and then z, which is the
most awkward strike of the 4 for most of us.

So for my expansion system I decided to use jj* for fast keyboard commands
for formatting, selection, text manipulation, etc., all those things that
take too many dialog boxes and keystrokes in Word. I reserved qq* for a
library of long boilerplate text blocks and templates, and kk* for running a
number of my macros very quickly without having to do a lot of awkward
Ctrl/Shift/Alt combo finger stretches. I currently use zz* to keyboard
quickly between various glossaries in IT and to access some other
hotkeyed general Windows scripts and automation than I use less frequently.

For instance, I have a macro that starts a comments page on a document that
I'm editing by inserting the file name (which shows patient last and first
name, ID#, date of service, type of report, and initials of dictating MD) in
large bold type and then dropping down to the first comment entry. Instead
of using the somewhat awkward keyboard hotkey combo assigned to the comment
header macro, or the Windows Alt+I+M command to insert additional comments
and Ctrl+S+C command to close the comment section, I wrote InstantText
shorts containing commands to run the appropriate macro by keyboarding kkch;
kkci; and kkcc;. As an aide-memoire I also put the full description of each
command in the long form, with code to delete it when the expansion is run,
as shown below:

kkch=Comment Header {Ctrl Shift Left}{Ctrl Shift Left}{Delete}{Alt Shift
/}{Alt Shift /}_
kkci=Comment Insert {Ctrl Shift Left}{Ctrl Shift Left}{Delete}{Alt
I}{M}{Backspace}{Space}{Space}_
kkcc=Comment Close {Ctrl Shift Left}{Ctrl Shift Left}{Delete}{Alt
I}{M}{Backspace}{Space}{Space}_

This is the macro for inserting the header, assigned to keyboard hotkeys of
Alt+?,?:
Sub CommentsHeader()
'
' CommentsHeader Macro
' Macro recorded 6/25/2003 by 14tonks
'
' HotKeys Alt+?,?

Selection.Comments.Add Range:=Selection.Range
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdWord, Count:=1
Selection.TypeParagraph
Selection.TypeParagraph
Selection.MoveUp Unit:=wdLine, Count:=2
Selection.Fields.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Type:=wdFieldEmpty, Text:=
_
"FILENAME ", PreserveFormatting:=True
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdWord, Count:=1
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdWord, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
Selection.Font.Name = "Arial"
Selection.Font.Size = 12
Selection.Font.Bold = True
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Selection.MoveDown Unit:=wdLine, Count:=2
Selection.TypeText Text:=" "
End Sub

I use kk itself to run a macro to open my personal reference document for
macros and assigned hotkey combos in my various templates.

Below is an example of a jj command to cap and underline the current line,
leaving the cursor in position to type a colon if needed. This sort of
command is useful with headings, allowing you to quickly apply any number of
different formats on the fly to a small standard selection of headings.
Using my previous suggestion for creating series of commands quickly using
formulas in Excel, you can make a whole pack of variations for selecting and
bolding, capping, italicizing, small capping, and underlining lines, words,
sentences, paragraphs, etc., in various combinations.

jjlcu=Line Cap & Underline{Ctrl Shift Left}{Ctrl Shift Left}{Ctrl Shift
Left}{Ctrl Shift Left}{Delete}{Shift Home}{Shift F3}{Shift F3}{Ctrl
U}{End}{Backspace}{Ctrl U}_

Here is another jj command, this one to delete the previous 2 sentences.
Again, one can use Excel to generate a large selection of these to delete
various numbers of letters, words, lines, sentences, and paragraphs. The Ctrl+Shift X,S hotkey combo the sentence deletion macro runs from would be h*** to type, but that doesn't matter, because I run it from an easy-to-type phrase in my expander. Using expander short forms to trigger macros gives me the use of all possible keyboard combinations as hotkeys, since ease of typing the assigned hotkeys is totally unimportatnt.

jjd2s=Delete 2 Sentences{Ctrl Shift Left}{Ctrl Shift Left}{Ctrl Shift Left}{Delete}{Ctrl Shift X}{Ctrl Shift S}{Ctrl Shift X}{Ctrl Shift S}_


Sub DelPrevSentence()
'
' DelPrevSentence Macro
' Macro recorded 4/8/2001 by 14tonks
'
'HotKeys Ctrl+Shift+X,S

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = ". "
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = False
.Wrap = wdFindAsk
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdLine, Extend:=wdExtend
Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
End Sub

Well by now you should be getting the idea how this code-keys-for-commands system works. Although I use InstantText, the principle can be used in any expander which allows you to add Ctrl, Alt, and Shift key press commands in your expansions.

If you are using your expander only for expanding abbreviations of words and phrases, you are missing half of what it can do for you. Set up a few reserved code keys for automating many of the rest of your tasks and you can really fly through your day.

:tonks

What a fantastic post! It is very, very much appreciated, Tonks!
:thumbsup

Great post, 14tonks, and SO valuable! Thanks for putting all the time and effort into it!

Paula :puter

Hello there, Paula! *waves madly*

Hi Harrie! Sorry I haven't been around much... My little one has her first cold and is teething so is hanging onto me like a little cling-on! Not much time for browsing or posting!

Will drop back in when I can!

Paula

Oooohh, I hope she gets over it very quickly, Paula! I bet it's harder on you than her!

I love your posts here, too! Thank you and never feel forced to post, either! Whenever the mood strikes is all!

It's so lovely to read the intelligent posts here. Nice work, Sheila.

I'm developing a huge pet peeve: when "macro" is used as if it meant the same thing as "expander" or "abbreviation/expansion." [BTW, what does everyone else call them? One says, "I wrote a Word macro to insert lab data quickly"; what's the equivalent term to mean you wrote an entry in your expander?]

Recently I was exploring the various online schools to see how many of them offer training in productivity skills. Most of them are using Diana Rolland's "The Name of the Game" text. I had a chance to look at this last April when Stedman's sent it to me to review as they were considering publishing it. I didn't think much of it: my 3 main criticisms were 1) it is set up to look like a workbook with lots of blank lines, but the author says that the lines are there for MTs to figure out their own abbreviations for the phrases. Thus if you just want to accept the author's coding of the various words and phrases, the lines are useless; 2) there is very little discussion of topics I think are important -- common and not so common features of expanders, comparison of which software offers which features, the theory behind naming systems -- basically most topics discussed here in depth are missing from that book. Instead one reads paragraph after paragraph of encouraging words, stuff I would expect in a self-help book, not a serious MT reference; 3) the author uses "macro" to mean expander and uses "nesting" when referring to what I would call a root phrase and variations. "Nesting" has a very specific meaning in programming and in macro formation. In sum, I think if all the blank lines and empty "you can do it" paragraphs were eliminated, one would have a very slim pamphlet outlining some basic rules for creating and naming expansions.


Somehow I stumbled across MT Bot Word Prediction Blog. I searched this forum for mention of it and only found reference to the excellent links page. Would someone point me to any discussions of this forthcoming software?

DH works for a different national than I do and has just volunteered to be part of the group testing an expander program that they're considering making a part of the platform. Harrie wondered whether it was MTBot. I'll let her know when he starts the project.

Here is a bit of discussion about it, Geek, and I've got to tell you, I'm quite anxious to try it out when it's released!

See this thread

Hmmm, I haven't heard of that book you mentioned. Interesting. Did Stedman's ever end up publishing it?