How do I create abbreviations?

There are two ways of creating a clipping and its abbreviation:

1) select some text, copy it to the clipboard and invoke Add a Clipping... from TypeIt4Me's menu

or:

2) invoke TypeIt4Me's Edit Clippings... and create new clippings in the System Preferences panel.

Let's have a look at each in turn:

1) Creating an entry via
Add a Clipping...
Suppose you often close your letters with the words Yours Sincerely. It would be quite easy to remember the abbreviation ys to stand for Yours Sincerely, wouldn't it? Well, to add this entry to the TypeIt4Me file, you would:

- type Yours Sincerely one last time in your word processor
- select the text and either cut or copy it to the clipboard
- select Add a Clipping from TypeIt4Me's menu.

At this point, you'll be prompted to name this new abbreviation:

As you can see in the picture above, TypeIt4Me will suggest that you use the first four letters of the text in the clipboard as your abbreviation. Although this might sometimes be appropriate, we decided this abbreviation would be called ys, so that's what we'll type now:


Click Add now and your first abbreviation will be added to the current file of clippings. From now on, every time you type ys TypeIt4Me will backspace over the abbreviation (ys) and type the full text for you (Yours Sincerely).

NB If the text on the clipboard was in Rich text format (i.e. contained font, style and colour information), you need to turn the Rich text radio button on if you want to save those RTF attributes when you click Add, otherwise the clipping will be saved as plain text by default.

2) Creating an entry via
Edit Clippings...
Select Edit Clippings from the TypeIt4Me menu. You'll be taken to the TypeIt4Me System Preferences panel:

Now click on the + button or type cmd-N and a newclipping named newabb will appear in the table with the newabb cell ready for editing and highlighted so that simply typing the new name will replace the word newabb. Press TAB and you'll be taken to the newclipping cell ready to be edited. Press TAB once more to exit edit mode.

- type ys as the name of the abbreviation

- press TAB then type Yours Sincerely

- press TAB once more to exit edit mode.

If you wish, you can now create more entries by repeating the above procedure. When you have finished, simply close the dialog.

That's it, you have already learnt most of what you need to know to make good use of TypeIt4Me.