Tag Archives: text expansion

May 2, 2013, 11:00 am

Text Expansion, Macros, and More with AutoHotkey for Windows

Text expansion generally refers to the way a few typed letters can expand into entire words, sentences, or even paragraphs. It’s a simple idea but an incredible time-saver.

We’ve talked about text expansion tools before on ProfHacker, but we’ve tended to focus on the Mac. What about text expansion for Windows? I’d like to recommend AutoHotkey, a powerful, open-source and free scripting tool that handles text expansion but also so much more. I’ve been using AutoHotkey for years, and it’s become such an integral part of my workflow that I often forget I’m even using it.

AutoHotkey runs in the Windows system tray whenever you load a *.ahk file. (Pro Tip: I placed a shortcut to my hotkeys.ahk file into my Startup folder, so my hotkeys load whenever I boot my computer). The .ahk file is simply a plain text file that contains your hotkey and macro scripts. You can edit the …

November 9, 2011, 8:00 am

Using Text Expansion for Mobile E-mail

By Jason B. Jones

This week, I was at an event on faculty-student boundaries and expectations in the age of social media and smartphones. There were several interesting points of discussion–most people (students and faculty) seemed to agree that it’s a little weird for faculty to ‘friend’ students first; what variables go into “how quickly should someone respond to an e-mail,” etc. Inevitably, someone complained about writing. If students aren’t writing rude messages, they’re introducing all kinds of text-messaging shortcuts into a format like e-mail.

Students quickly pointed out, first, that lots of faculty have bad e-mail habits, too, and, second, the bluntness, shortcuts, and, second, typos and bluntness are often an artifact of typing on mobile devices. Everyone knows someone with an e-mail signature blames their typos on their phone, of course. And I had a friend in grad school who studied…

September 23, 2010, 3:00 pm

Using Text-Expansion Software to Respond to Student Writing

By George Williams

I’ve recently started using text expansion software to improve the written feedback I provide to my students with regard to their writing, and it’s made a huge difference. Let me explain.

I teach students how to write. It’s a huge part of my job, and I love it…for the most part. I love talking with students about their writing. I love looking at their drafts and giving them feedback. I love reading what they write. One thing I don’t love, however, is writing up my comments about their writing, comments that not only respond to the content of their work but also to the form.

The reason I don’t love doing this is because it’s an activity that can get very repetitive. In my experience—and in the experience of most of us who read student writing—students tend to run into trouble with the same relatively limited set of problems. They need a nudge here and there with issues ranging from…

May 6, 2010, 10:00 am

Smarter Typing Through Text Expansion

By Ryan Cordell

text expander In last Friday’s post on developing an electronic communication policy, Ethan mentioned that he was considering adopting SmileOnMyMac’s TextExpander to respond quickly to student emails. This was a fortuitous (dare I say well-planned?) comment, as I was working on this post even as I read his article. TextExpander has become such an integral (and even subconscious) part of my routine that, quite honestly, I often forget it’s not a part of my computer’s operating system.

There are quite a few text expansion applications out there, including Texter (for Windows), Activewords (for Windows), Typinator (for OS X), and TypeIt4Me (for OS X). The latest version of OS X even includes rudimentary text substitution (though the “Language and Text” preference pane), though it’s less robust that these other solutions. I’ve been using TextExpander for several years now, and so will draw my examples…