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    No Mistakes Writing, Volume I: Writing Shortcuts
    No Mistakes Writing, Volume I: Writing Shortcuts
    No Mistakes Writing, Volume I: Writing Shortcuts
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    No Mistakes Writing, Volume I: Writing Shortcuts

    By Giacomo Giammatteo

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    About this ebook

    Everybody loves shortcuts. Don’t deny it; I know you do. Think of how many times you’ve been driving somewhere with a buddy, and you hit a traffic jam. How great did it feel when you could say, “Take a right at the next road. I know a shortcut.”

    This is a shortcut for every-day life. If you use a keyboard to type, this book will save you time, lots of time.

    You may have tried a text expansion app before, and maybe you didn’t have much luck, but this book isn’t about any particular app, it’s about a process. A process anyone can learn, and more importantly, anyone can remember.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGiacomo Giammatteo
    Release dateNov 26, 2016
    ISBN9781940313191
    No Mistakes Writing, Volume I: Writing Shortcuts
    Author

    Giacomo Giammatteo

    Giacomo Giammatteo lives in Texas, where he and his wife run an animal sanctuary and take care of 41 loving rescues. By day, he works as a headhunter in the medical device industry, and at night, he writes.

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      Book preview

      No Mistakes Writing, Volume I - Giacomo Giammatteo

      Shortcuts

      Everybody loves shortcuts. Don’t deny it. I know you do. Think of how many times you’ve been driving somewhere with a buddy and you hit a traffic jam. How great did it feel when you could say, Take a right at the next road. I know a shortcut.

      But what if that shortcut has a bridge and the bridge is out?

      That’s what happens all too often with apps designed to save you time. They are built with good intentions, and, technically, they’re fantastic. But with many of them, the process of making them work for you is no different than a road with the bridge out.

      I can’t tell you how many to-do apps I tried before I found one that worked for me. Most were more trouble than they were worth. Text-expansion apps are no different. They have the potential to be the biggest time savers in your digital life, but they won’t do you a bit of good if you can’t—or don’t—make full use of them. And making use of them depends on the process you use. So let’s take a look at the process.

      The Process

      A text-expansion app is based on a simple concept. You type a few keystrokes, and the app recognizes what you’ve typed. It then expands it into something else—something you’ve saved in the database. On the simplest level, things like my initials, jg, become Jim Giammatteo. Slightly more complex would be the entire address, complete with line returns. So jgadd would expand to:

      Jim Giammatteo

      474 Mystery Lane

      Midland, TX 00000

      But there are other, far more complex, expansions you can use that will save you time—real time.

      What to do when faced with sites or organizations like The Alliance of Independent Authors?

      It would seem easy to just say, I’ll use the acronym, but is it an acronym or an initialism? (Check out my No Mistakes Grammar books to find out.)

      So you type Alliance of Independent Authors in the expansion part and then use AIA for the shortcut, and all is good . . .

      until you sign up for another organization called the Association of Independent Authors,

      or you forget which parts of the acronym you used, or even forget the name of the organization. Don’t laugh—it will happen.

      So what do you do?

      It’s easy. In situations like this, use the whole first word followed by whatever you want to remember.

      Examples

      For the website link—use Alliancew, and it will expand to http://allianceindependentauthors.org.

      Login—use Alliancelogin. (You can use this as a reference only or separate shortcuts for username and password, although not all sites will allow shortcuts to be used for passwords.)

      For simply spelling out the name in text—use Alliancename, which expands to Alliance of Independent Authors.

      Everything I’m going to show you will be based on using a process so simple that it’s almost impossible to forget. That is the key to making an app like TextExpander™ work for you. It doesn’t matter how many keystrokes you have to use—though that’s helpful—but what good is it if you forget the shortcut?

      Introduction to Text Shortcuts

      The Problem

      Most people who try text shortcuts give up after a while, or they make an effort, create a few shortcuts, and then forget about them. They continue to use what they have, but as soon as they forget the shortcut, it’s gone and seldom replaced or even looked up.

      I’m going to teach you how to remember all of them!

      The secret is not in creating shortcuts with the fewest letters; it’s in creating shortcuts you will remember—tomorrow, next week, next month, and even next year. If you can do that successfully, you’ll save a tremendous amount of time.

      This is so important I’m going to repeat it.

      icon The secret is not to be clever and try to create the shortcut with the fewest letters. The secret is to create shortcuts you will remember—tomorrow, next week, next month, and ten years from now.

      Unlike most books or articles you may have read on similar subjects, this book isn’t specifically about one program. It’s about shortcuts, and although I use TextExpander™, it doesn’t matter which app you use, really.

      This book is about the process and how to make it work for you. With that said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that of all the apps I’ve tried—and I’ve tried many—I’ve found TextExpander™ to be the best.

      Using TextExpander™ with Email

      If you’re in the business world, you probably send dozens of emails per day. Many of these emails contain the same basic information—which makes them a perfect candidate for automation using a text-expansion app. I’ll show you what I mean.

      Let’s Start with a Few Basics

      We repeatedly use the same topics for our subject lines. Whether it’s previous discussion or today’s conversation or follow-up on meeting, we tend to stick to a few common subject lines. And that’s great.

      Here’s a little trick where TextExpander™ can help speed up that process. I’m sure you’re already thinking, Yeah, I know. Create a shortcut. But you can also add something to the shortcut to speed it up a bit more. First, let’s create the shortcuts.

      For previous discussion, we’ll use pd.

      Today’s conversation will get tc.

      Follow-up on meeting we’ll assign fum.

      So, now when you address an email, all you have to do is type the shortcut into the subject line and then tab into the body of the email to begin writing your message.

      The great thing is that TextExpander™ makes it so you can eliminate that step of tabbing. Here’s how:

      When you create the shortcut, all you have to do is go to the Insert menu, located just above the Abbreviation box. It’s circled in red below.

      img01

      Click on the menu, select Key, and then

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