Help with typos

by Carol
(UK)

At work, I kept finding that I was making mistakes with the same words over and over again. After it happened too many times I decided to do something about it.

I downloaded a program for my Mac called TextExpander. It is really designed for inputting stored passages of text when you type a shortcut that you have set up for the purpose.

When I pinpoint a word that I keep getting wrong, I input the wrong spelling as the "trigger" and the correct spelling as the replacement text. This way each time I spell it incorrectly the program instantly replaces it with what I meant to type.

There is a trick to setting up shortcuts, I have found. For example when I typed oct (without the spaces) the program expanded it to October for me. This was fine until I wanted to write the word Octopus! Having to delete letters from a word and then retype it takes time! So I tend to create shortcuts that start with a double letter. In the case above I write ooct instead. You may have noticed that the word that replaces my shortcut here is also capitalized, saving me from pressing the Caps key.

We also have product names that have upper case letters in the middle of them. It is much easier to write the word in all lower case and have the program insert it for me. TextExpander to the rescue again!

For those using a Windows PC rather than a Mac, there is a similar program available. It is called ActiveWords (see how my trusty shortcut worked there?).

Another key press that can hold me up is when I have to insert an apostrophe within a word. They can be annoying can't they? For such words as "can't", I set up another shortcut, so that I can type it without the apostrophe and it gets inserted automatically.

I am sure there are other programs out there that can help in the same way, for example the AutoCorrect in Word. However, the two I mention above work in ALL programs on your computer, which I find tremendously helpful. I hope this helps you too.