I like the Expander that comes with my company's software but I can't find a commercial expander like it.
I am trying ShortHand but the main thing I don't like about it is that it does not recognize when characters entered are part of a preexisting word. So if I'm editing and just entering a letter here and there, Shorthand records those characters, and if I hit the spacebar or punctuation mark and those characters happen to be one of my abbreviations, Shorthand will expand those characters even if I did not want an expansion there. I have to stop the expansion manually. For example, if I'm editing and change the word "proceed" to "proceeding" by adding an "ing," which is also my abbreviation for "inguinal," Shorthand thinks I want "inguinal" there and I end up with "proceedinguinal" unless I notice the expansion ahead of time and stop it manually.
My company's expander does not do this. When I add a character to a word, it recognizes the characters that are already there. So when I add "ing" to "proceed," it recognizes that I intend the "ing" to be part of the already-existing word "proceed" and does not expand the "ing" to "inguinal."
With my company's expander I can also go back and add a character or two to letters that are already there, hit the spacebar, and get the expansion, whereas with Shorthand, if I missed a letter in an abbreviation and go back to correct it, I have to enter the whole abbreviation again from scratch. For example, if I meant to type "tahbso" but I missed the "o" and didn't notice it until proofreading later, I could go back and add the "o" on the end of the already-existing "tahbs," hit the spacebar, and the abbreviation would expand. With Shorthand, I find I have to retype "tahbso" to get it to expand.
I'm not that experienced with Shorthand so maybe there are different settings in it that could avoid the unwanted expansions, but then again maybe not.
Anyway, I'm just wondering if there's an expander that will recognize when characters are already part of a word and when they are not and behave accordingly. Thanks. |
