Do you have a text expansion app? They are really game changers and I can't recommend one enough. These are simple programs that take what you type and expand it into something else. Kind of like autocorrect, but potentially less annoying and more useful, because you control exactly how they are triggered.

For example. If I type "tho" in most apps, that is automatically replaces a second later with "though". (In fact, it works so well I had to erase the "ugh" from that example to show the trigger word). To help avoid other words that start with "tho", by default the expansion only triggers when it is followed by a space or other punctuation symbol (or anything else, if you set it in preferences).

(for the preceding example and the following examples in this post, I put the trigger words in quotes to make them stand out, but needless to say I don't type quotes when I am using them for real)

A great use case is names with complex spellings or nonstandard letters. For example, for me I use it a lot for Japanese names, which in English often have letters with macrons over them. These are annoying to type, so I use text expansion! For example, if I type "saigyo", it instantly turns into "Saigyō" with that macron on the o—and also capitalizing it in case I forgot to do so. Or if I type "manyoshu" it is replaced with "Man'yōshū" (a poetry collection).

These expansions also adapt to the position in the sentence. For example, if I type "eg" in a sentence, it will pop to "e.g.", but if I type "eg" at the beginning of the sentence, it will pop to "E.g.".

They can be any length too. E.g. if I type "li;" I get "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

(that is the standard filler text in publishing and web design)

That's not all!

Usually these text expansion apps allow all kinds of variables. Some built in variables might be current day. I use "ds;" for this (I often end expansions like this with a semicolon for the trigger, since I might not be typing a space afterwards for this kind of trigger). If I type that, it is replaced with the current day (5/26/24 as I'm writing this, though I probably won't post it for a few days). If that's too American for you, for Japanese colleagues I use "dsi;" which pops to 2024-05-26.

ds stands for "date stamp" and dsi for "date stamp international", by the way. My system for remembering these things is to use the first letter of each word.

These built-in variables usually allow manipulation. For example, if I type "dsy;" (date stamp yesterday) I get 05/25/24. If I type "dsiy4;" then it pops out 2024-05-22. And so on. These are less time consuming to set up than you might think and they are very useful in business writing when I might have to reference x days in the past or future.

You can also get more complex. For example, say you often respond the same way to multiple people, you can trigger an expansion that will prompt you for a name and will then paste in:

Hi NAME,

Thanks for your email. I will consider your words carefully and will then completely ignore them.

Thanks again,
David

All triggered by something like, say "smr;" (standard mail reply).

You know that footer I put at the bottom of all my posts (scroll down to the bottom of this one to see it). I have that written in HTML and trigger it to insert all the code with "pf;" (post footer)

Neat, huh? But wait, there's more!

Usually you can also trigger scripts, so if you know AppleScript or Python, you can even trigger complex scripts.

If you've never tried one, you really should!

Just on Mac alone there are pages of text expansion apps. I have used aText for years, if you want a name. It was only something small like $5. I assume there are even more on Windows and Linux.

Give one a shot!

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.