Lately I have been working diligently on adding more and more entries to my Shorthand dictionary. There are times when it seems like there are so many that it is almost distracting! While adding entries, I have also been "cleaning out" old, unused entries as well, but I found myself wondering if it were possible to have too many? Has anyone ever found this to be the case?

Well, I really don't think so, not really. I have all the "normal" stuff such as, mild persistent asthma and like that. But, it seems no how matter much you have in, somebody comes up with a different way of saying it, i.e.

She could have
She might have
She may have
She very well could have
She also could have
She could also have
She could very well have
She well may have

Well... You see what I mean. That particular list can just go on and on. So, no, I'm not inclined to believe you can have too much, course, this is all just IMHO.

Marti

It's a good question. I'm inclined to also say you can't have too many, however, the big thing is, are you using them? It's pointless to have a million entries if you aren't using them, don't have a clue what they are, etc. Again, this is why systems mean so much to me. There's no way I'm going to remember that three weeks ago I put in severe back pain or chordae tendineae or distal right ureter, but I know how I would have abbreviated each of those entries, so I can quickly find out if I put them in! (And actually, you do remember a lot of them that you put in, don't you). If you are cleaning out the ones you never use, that's probably good. On the other side of that coin, sometimes I leave a phrase in with the shorts abbreviated two different ways; that way whichever one my mind picks at the moment will work! <grin>

The other thing is, without a visual expander such as Instant Text, Shorthand, Smartype and others which have visuals, then no, I would definitely not want to overdo it. Wouldn't work for me. Don't get me wrong. I could still use systems for lots and lots of phrases, and I would. But I have so many that are long, really long, either whole paragraphs or very long sentences; plus, many are quite close with only a small difference in the phrase. To me, it would be dangerous to have all those in there without a visual expander. I need to see them beforehand and be sure I choose the right thing! And being able to see them after just inputting part of the short is so awesome!

Here's a suggestion too, ColoRADoMT, if it gels for you....if you find that it's becoming distracting, maybe you should change things around so that you have "add" sessions but, make them very specific. Like, today I'm going to add only phrases with "fracture" in them. Or, today I'm going to concentrate on 3-word pain phrases with an adjective in front. That sort of thing. I find that when I do that, I really and truly do remember that I've got this or that entry.

Thankyou Marti and Harrie! I checked my statistics in Shorthand today and found that I was up to 67% of characters typed by Shorthand, that is up substantially from a few weeks ago, when I was hovering in the mid 50% range!! Also my reports per hour have icreased as well, so obviously the extra entries are working for me!

Harrie, you are absolutely right about limiting what entries I work on at any given time. I have been concentrating on only adding entries for the doctor that is dictating on a particular day. This helps me a lot because I use them right away and use them often on the same day.

I'll get used to the distraction of all these entries, and will definitely continue to make more, as well as tweaking the pre-existing ones. I'm hoping to reach the 70% mark.

Kathi

Kathi, you may have said before, and I've only got a minute currently so I haven't looked, but - do you use the hint window or the suggestion window in Shorthand? I always preferred the suggestion window for its ability to let you see so many different phrases after one or two letters only, myself, and I'm curious to know if you care for that method or not.

Anyway, it sounds as if you are doing just great!

I use both the hint window and the suggestion window, although I must admit I don't usually pay much attention to the hint window. Since I have added so many entries I seem to be watching the suggestion window quite a bit, which is actually why I thought the extra entries might be distracting. After checking out the stats though, I realize the time I spend to look at the suggestion window is less than the time that I would have spent hitting every keystroke.

Kathi

Well, my reaction to that is....cool beans!