Text Expansion with Typinator: The secret weapon to write more and stress less

If I had discovered text expansion way, way earlier in my career, I could have written three more full size novels with the sheer gain of productivity that it entails. Or just chilled somewhere, drinking margaritas. Do you know how many margaritas a novel represents?

Hi, I’m Lionel Davoust, I’m a fantasy and thriller writer from France with around 40 short stories and 15 books under my belt, and like all writers, I like margaritas.

And I’m not kidding with text expansion.

Text expansion, at its core, is such a simple idea that it took me years to realize how powerful and versatile it can be: type a shorthand, get expanded text. As in that sentence a few paragraphs above: like many of us, I end up having to type my name quite often on computers. Because that mixes capital letters with lower type, that there are few things more embarrassing than messing up your name, and because I’m lazy like all writers, I have a Typinator macro that does this for me. I type mmoi (French amounting to “mme”) and boom, my name appears instead. A few keystrokes gained.

But when you spend hours, days in front of computers, those few keystrokes multiply. And at the end of the day week, month, year, they add up. They really do.

I have estimated that text expansion saves me over 20,000 keystrokes a month.

The main benefit of text expansion: productivity

Yes, you read that right. Twenty thousand. That roughly amounts to a whole short story; about ten pages of typed text, every month, that I simply do not have to type at all!

Sure, I spend most days in front of a text processor, so that inflates the stats. Yes, not everybody is a writer. But is that really true? These days, we are all writers of some kind. We spend a lot of time in front of a keyboard. And these stats encompass my whole use of the computer, not only the time spent writing stories: that also includes articles, blogs, social media posts, and… email. Email is tremendously important when you are a freelancer – it is your window to the world, your main means of communication – but it is also a dangerously repetitive endeavour, as we all know. I often ends up having to say the same things to different people regarding news of my production, accepting or declining offers, and so on.

And then you have greetings and closing formulae – which French as a crazy range of. For instance:

saldis → “Veuillez agréer, Messieurs, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées” (formal, but frequently used equivalent of “Best regards”. Can you imagine writing this every freaking time?)

bcdt→ “Bien cordialement” (more relaxed version of “Best regards”. English is so much simpler…)

amt→ “Amitiés” (”Cheers”)

The other huge benefits of text expansion: accuracy and health

Of course, because in an app like Typinator, you define your macros once and for all, that ensures that the typed text is always correct. That closing polite formula will always come out right. That complex expression you are never quite sure how to type has been defined for good. There are no typos to fix as you type.

Which brings us to another important benefit, which is health. Back, neck, wrist problems are very common amongst knowledge workers. Get your point across quicker, spend less time in front of the keyboard, writing and fixing mistakes, and you can spend more time spent drinking margaritas.

I mean – you enjoy a more relaxed typing experience, which is kinder of the wrists and fingers. And that keeps your main tool – your hands! – in shape for longer.

A grab bag of writing tricks

Now, of course, there are many more things, actually more interesting things, that you can do with text expansion, apart from repeating your own name and automating closing formulae in emails. The takeaway is: if you write text, you will benefit from text expansion, and that means watching for any and all occasions to automate stuff. This expression that comes up often in your writing? Make a snippet for it. That name you end up typing all the time, be it your company’s, department’s or even spouse’s? Make a snippet. That link you send all the time to people? Snippet. That standard message you find yourself repeating from time to time? Snippet, snippet, snippet all the things.

Examples of everyday writing.

We all have a writing voice, even if we do not write stories. We like some expressions that we end up typing often, and everyday words show up constantly. Automate this. In my case, these include tjs → “toujours” (always), jms → “jamais” (never), tlm → “tout le monde” (everybody), ajd → “aujourd’hui” (today – notice the special apostrophe which respects the French typographical rules: that’s in the snippet)! I have about 150 more. I now seldom write full words in any regular sentence. I have common expressions, as well as the specific vocabulary of my fantasy worlds.

An extract of my “general writing” snippet category.

Titles (yours and others)

One day, I decided it would be fun to title a short story « Faisabilité et intérêt zootechniques de la métamorphose de masse » (“Zootechnical feasibility and pertinence of mass metamorphosis”, more or less). I am not kidding. When you publish a short story, you want people to know about it, and that is how, my friends, you end up cursing yourself forever because you have type that bloody title again, again, and again, everywhere. But no more. These days, I only type fiz. I have shorthand for all my titles, and I have to admit, even for others’. It’s impossible to be a fantasy writer and not discuss Game of Thrones on a regular basis online. So yes, I now just type -got.

Links

As a freelancer, this is invaluable: I redirect people to my platforms all the time, to some specific pages of my website, to my blog, to the writing podcast I produce, to my social media profile, to reference websites, and so on. Imagine the time you need to: load the website, find the relevant webpage, copy and paste the link in whatever piece you’re working on – and doing so every time? Madness. With Typinator, you do that exactly once – so as to build the snippet you will be defining going forward.

An extract of my “website links” snippet category. So far, I have 84 of those.

Emojis

Emojis are fun, they help online communication by conveying tone – but why would you need to automate them when there is a system picker tailored for them? Well, emojis have a hidden power: they are symbols that you can use everywhere, not only in messages. And especially in your notes, in your journals, in any kind of personal content where you can use some color and visual landmarks to help break a long text. I use them as signifiers constantly. For instance, ⚠️ indicates something to pay attention to, 💡 denotes an idea, ❓ is for an important question such as a plot problem, 📄 points to a scene; and they can be combined, like 💡📄 for a scene idea. Assigning snippets to emojis means that you are not breaking the flow of writing when using them: instead of having to fish for the right symbol in the picker, they become words like any other that you type along with the rest of your text. Above, for instance, eeid gives me 💡 (“emoji IDea”), eeisc gives me 💡📄 (“emoji Idea for a SCene”).

Emojis galore!

App and code automation

Sometimes, I need to use a few macros in my notes, such as a specific syntax in my notes app of choice, Obsidian. I know these commands exist. I know I looked for them. Now, do I remember the precise syntax for a progress bar? For a multi-column layout? No. Do I care? Not in the least. Typinator remembers this for me. I know I just have to type mkcd to get a block of Markdown code. I’ve looked for it exactly once.

Some automation macros for common Obsidian syntaxes.

Why Typinator?

Let’s be honest, there are several text expansion tools on the market, and even system ones such as on macOS. Why have I been paying for Typinator instead of relying on the system tools? Why did I agree to this guest post? That means I must really love the app, right?

Three answers.

1) Flawless management of upper and lower case. A text tool needs to manage text flawlessly, otherwise, what’s the point? And this is where the system tools fall short. I need, and want precise control of the capitalization of my snippets, which may change depending on context (La Messagère du Ciel, “Heaven’s Messenger”, is the title of book 1 of my series « Les Dieux sauvages », but “la Messagère du Ciel” is the title that the main character gives herself in the story: notice the difference of capitalization with the article “la”). I can tell Typinator what I’m doing and it does what I ask on the fly.

2) Incomparable speed and accuracy. Text replacement needs to be faster than you can type, and I’ve tested all alternatives on macOS, year after year, nothing beats Typinator’s speed. The text expansion is literally instant. It really feels like you’re flying on the keyboard. It’s magical.

3) One-off purchase. I want to support developers and am more than happy to pay for software upgrades, however I fail to see how a text expansion tool would require an ongoing subscription to work. Typinator is a single purchase, incurring no ongoing costs. This is a customer-friendly model and a major selling point.

There is a lot of talk these days about so-called “artificial intelligence”. It’s supposedly the killer feature, but not in the way most people think. They hope to gain time and productivity by delegating the task of writing to these large language models, but by doing so, they support a predatory model and they abdicate the task of thinking. This is a tragedy, especially as there is a better way to reclaim time and productivity: type as quickly as you can think, without foregoing the important task of thinking itself. Text expansion, using Typinator, is the little known hack for this. Use your own original thoughts in your own original work, by having software speed up the way you write, in the way that you have defined for yourself.

Come on. Margaritas await.