This article was originally published on AQText's blog.

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I am excited to introduce a guest post by Miryam Blum, a seasoned Hebrew<>English

translator, who has been translating articles for the finacial pages of Haaretz/TheMarker
for over ten years and has a freelance business, translating mainly academic articles and
PR films and materials for Jewish education projects. Miryam's first introduction of the
AutoCorrect technique, at the Israel Translators Association convention, won instant
accolades Miryam can be reached at miryam.blum at gmail.com.

AutoCorrect One of Microsoft Office's most time-saving features for translators (or
anyone who types a lot, for that matter) is AutoCorrect. Initially designed to
automatically correct common typing errors, such as teh, instead of the, or feild, instead
of field, AutoCorrect allows you to add words that you commonly misspell. In order to
increase productivity, you can also add entries that you make up, so that you only need to
type 2, 3 or 4 letters in a word or phrase, and the program will do the rest.

Any word that has seven or more letters, and even some four-letter words and two-word
phrases with only 6 letters can be made into AutoCorrect entries to save time while
typing.

The main principle is to reduce the number of keystrokes and switching back and forth
between the right and left hands. Even a city name as simple as Lod can be shortened to
ld if it appears many times in a text.

AutoCorrect is really helpful for typing words that use the same fingers on both hands,
and which can be misspelled because the message goes to the correct finger, but on the
wrong hand. One classic example is also. I have an AutoCorrect entry for this, so that I
never have to think about switching back and forth between hands to type the l and the o.
I just type aso, and Word fills in the l for me. Another example is future - five out of its
six letters are typed with the index finger, and your brain has to send messages alternately
to each hand. Why bother, when you can type the whole word with one finger of one
hand: ftr. If you are translating a document about furniture, you can change your
AutoCorrect entry for ftr to expand to furniture instead of future.

AutoCorrect's does not limit the length of the entries, making it possible to "type" entire
paragraphs with just several keystrokes. This comes especially handy in client
communications via Outlook. You can create shortcuts for large blocks of information
(payment details, driving instructions, project rules, etc). AutoCorrect entries can be
changed as often as you want, to suit your evolving needs.

How AutoCorrect works:

AutoCorrect is activated by the space bar, the Tab key, Enter, and any punctuation mark -
comma, period, apostrophe, question or exclamation mark, or mathematical symbol - so
you can even use AutoCorrect to help speed up typing formulas.
The fact that AutoCorrect is activated by the space bar and the punctuation marks really
speeds up typing, because once you learn the abbreviations that you create, you just type
the three or four-letter combinations as you go along, without even thinking about them -
the computer does the rest.

Make short words even shorter:

aso also
bf before
bc because
betw between

Type 3 letters for 3-word phrases:

iot In order to
iow In other words
iplr in particular
itp in the past
itf In the future
itm In the meantime

Like any Microsoft feature, you can access and add or change AutoCorrect entries in
several ways. Read more about AutoCorrect on Microsoft's Support site.

Create AutoCorrect entries for:

Common words
Frequently used phrases
Names of people, places, countries, institutions
Acronyms - let AutoCorrect capitalize them for you

Your goals when creating AutoCorrect entries:

Reduce the number of keystrokes and hand changes.
Any word or phrase with more than 6 letters that is used repeatedly should have an
AutoCorrect entry

Keys to creating easy-to-remember AutoCorrect entries:

Find letter combinations that are not real words, but are easy for you to remember.
3-letter combinations work best
Use the main consonants or sounds in a word or phrase:

Tips for maximizing your AutoCorrect glossary:

When you create an entry for a noun, create a second entry for its plural
Add suffixes to the 3-letter basic abbreviation
eg.: dfr = different; dfrc = difference; dfrly = differently
Change the 3-letter entries as necessary - you can always change them back.