Personal abbreviation

I was recently transcribing some passages from a book directly on to my lap top – cut & paste just not an option, and however good it will be when the day come when all is available at the click of a mouse or squeeze of finger, there is something about copying it for yourself that alters the way you remember & interpret it, even appreciate the language.

Since the passages were relatively lengthy I found myself slipping back into the habits of abbreviation which I developed in the long days spent in archives & libraries copying out all source materials by hand.

This made me realise, once again, that there is an inbuilt human urge to abbreviate; it is not a novel disease of teenage txtrs.

Funnily enough, although the abbreviations never interfered with the fluency of my reading of my own hand-written notes, when typed the result is botheration & bewilderment, as if I were deciphering the runes.

What I need is some kind of hybrid spell/grammar checker crossed with that part of speech recognition software which will automatically tailor the expansions to my own idiosyncratic contractions.

In the meantime, for my own amusement, as an exercise in memory & with the thought that as memory fades a crib may come in useful, I have been jotting down some of these, as I rummage around the synapses

nec.      necessary
wh       which
w        with
prob    probably
P        probability
T       the
→     implies or [leads] to or causes
F       Fenian
tog     together
la       local authority
pop    population
hhld    household
v        very
cttee   committee
econ   econom(y)ic(s)
soc     social or society
∑       total
yr(s)   year(s); Your(s)
m       married
b        born
C      century


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