I for one have over 2500 abbreviations for common words, and this number is growing. For example, I never write 'because' I write 'bc' and as soon as I hit the space bar the full word expands! How many times in your life are you going to have to write a common word like 'because'? Most assuredly often enough to make an abbreviation for it....
Mnemologistics |
A great part of this involves an attempt to develop a comprehensive abbreviation system - all of which leads to, among other things, a better way to read and write.
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Hitherto the great bulk of the written
language has been
limited to either the printing press or pen and paper. Today,
however,
a great deal of it is transpired through electronic media,
moreover, the reading and writing people do has increased
tremendously. More reading and writing is done today than any
other time. Yet to date practically nothing has been done to make that
reading and writing more efficient. We're still plucking out the full
literal chunks of every letter of every written word, thus not only
bringing
needless toil for our fingers and eyes, but for our mental
faculties which are dragged along with it, as they're part and parcel of
the very language we read and write. Abbreviations have always existed, but never has a smooth transition to such an extensive abbreviation system been so close at hand. Now, a great change in the way we read and write, i.e., a new written language itself, can possibly be the outcome of such an extensive abbreviation system. Among other things, this would lead to a more mnemonic and abstract language. Most of the work for an abbreviation system involves creating the abbreviation system database, which means, among other things, noting the frequency of word usage, developing an effective keyboard home mapping scheme for the most common abbreviations, and of course figuring out the actual syntax for all the abbreviations so they don't conflict and so they're not too difficult to type and remember. Here is an old ad hoc list of abbreviations I used a while back. Here are Wil Baden's abbreviations and tips (39k). Abbreviated text can serve the following purposes:
This abbreviation system may sound like a pretty trivial thing at first but not so when one considers the fact that a concentrated shift to abbreviate text can lead to an overhaul of written language as we know it. Right now we're talking about abbreviating words which in turn are recognized by the computer then extended to their full traditional spelled out forms. Such an abbreviation system can increase writing speeds many fold. Today, an exceptional typist can type at 70 wpm, and an average person will type, say, at around 30 wpm. If abbreviations are used the average person will out-do the exceptional typist without abbreviations, and the exceptional typist still probably have trouble thinking as fast as she/he can type. All this has tremendous implications for language, and the way we communicate, not least of which is a move to a more mnemonic language. These changes, I believe, are for the better, and have great practical implications. Many people already spend so much time on the keyboard that carpal tunnel syndrome has become a major problem. With such an abbreviation system people will be able to type with little effort at least twice as fast, save paper when printing, save on eye and finger movement when reading, and speed up not only reading but hand writing and thinking as well. I've also done some preliminary work on the speech equivalent of this, i.e., abbreviating speech (mostly electronic) to more distinct and much shorter audio signals.
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7 the 4 of 3 words 2 unix 2 this 2 text 2 script 2 s 2 here 2 and 2 all 2 a 1 you 1 will 1 veryThe Brown Corpus takes representative texts from a wide range of sources, but if you're constructing your own private abbreviations there's no better source than your own writings. A good place to start however might be the Brown Corpus top words found in many of the unix operating systems at /usr/lib/eign.
ABBREVIATE (v1.12)
WHAT THE PROGRAM DOES
abbreviate.py can do any of the following:
EXPAND: Take any abbreviated text and un-abbreviate (expand) it.
EXPORT: Allow various editors (vi clones, xemacs)
and word processors (MS-Word) the ability to use abbreviations
using one plain text abbreviation list as a base. It does this by
exporting the abbreviation list to a file which can be used by the
editor or word processor.
ABBREVIATE: Take any text file and abbreviate the text in it.
QUICK START
You'll need python version 1.5 or better on your system
(see www.python.org if you don't have python). To run it download the
the program abbreviate.py program below and put it where it can be executed on your
system and you'll be ready to go. "abbreviate.py -h" will give you a list
of available commands.
Make sure abbreviate.py is in your path and that it's executable, and
that you have an abbreviation list. The list should be of the
following format:
(abbreviation) (un-abbreviated word or phrase)
For example, you might have a list like:
bc because
fe for example,
hwe however
Words will be expanded according to case in the abbreviation. For
example, using the above list "hwe" would expand to "however" but "Hwe"
would expand to "However". If don't want any case conversion you can
write abbreviations the following way:
la=Los Angeles
wil=William
tO=though
Here case will be taken literally so "la" will expand to "Los Angeles"
but "La" will not expand at all.
You can have comments in the list designated by putting a "#" as the
first character of each line.
EXPAND
abbreviate.py can take a text file with abbreviated words and expand
the abbreviations using a specified abbreviation list as a basis for
the expansion. Say I write a report on my palmtop in abbreviated code.
Once I get this file to my PC as a plain text file I can expand the
abbreviated text with the command:
abbreviate.py -a my-abbreviation-list.txt -i my-report.txt
This will expand all the abbreviations in the file my-report.txt by
printing out the text on the screen. To send it to a file just tack on
" > filename.txt"
without the quotes to the above command.
EXPORT
abbreviate.py can export the abbreviations list to a format which
various editors (vi and some of their clones including vim and xemacs)
and word processors (ms-word) can use. The master abbreviations list
stays in tact and an editor specific file is created from the list. So
all you need do is keep only one abbreviation list. To create an
abbreviations file for the vim - and vi clone editors - you would give
the command:
abbreviate.py -v -a my-abbreviation-list.txt > vi-abbreviations-list.txt
The produced file can then be appended to the vim configuration file,
e.g., .vimrc
ABBREVIATE
abbreviate.py can take any text and abbreviate it. For example to
abbreviate report.txt you would give the command:
abbreviate.py -b -a my-abbreviation-list.txt -i report.txt
Download abbreviate.py.
Juha also provides a word95 Macro to remove abbreviations - found within in the abbreviate program above:This is a perl script written by Markus Laker which will attempt to capitalize only the words at the beginning of a sentence.
-------- begin Markus' capitalization script ---------
# Capitalise the first alpha char in a paragraph as long as
# it's preceded only by spaces and quotes, and the first
# alpha after every dot, query and pling.
# Leave other capitals (e.g. in proper names) intact.
# This is a disproof of principle, as it were.
$/ = '';
while (<>)
{ s/^([\s"']*)(\w)/$1 . uc $2/e; # do the first one;
s/([\.\?\!]\W*)(\w)/$1 . uc $2/eg; # do the rest.
print;
}
-------- end Markus' capitalization script ---------
[Enter] ;l # I have a big keyboard and I have a sore pinky [backspace] ;h [escape] ;d [Page Up] ;u [Page Down] ;gThese make life at the keyboard much more effective. Of course I've got my own reasons for mapping things the way I do, everyone is going to have to decide for themselves what works best for them and their system. The more you can get away from reaching for the mouse the better off you are!
If anybody knows of a very light touch AND short distance (key press distance) keyboard please let us know in the guest book.
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