Re: MQ question

From: 14tonks (mail.2.14tonks_at_recursor.net)
Date: 01/08/05 

Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 13:34:23 -0500

No argument that one can end up with lots of vocabularies for IT, each
containing thousands of phrases. However, one can generate huge chunks of
those vocabularies, or glossaries as IT calls them, automatically by running
a selection of documents for a specific account or specific specialty
through the compiler.

IT actually offers glossaries of "singles" which one can choose to use or
change or delete. There's nothing wrong with single-letter shorts for
most-frequently-used words if you want them.

Yes, you need to keep your eyes, or at least one of them, on the advisories
at the bottom of the screen as you type using IT, to make sure you are
getting the expansions you want. Some people can learn to do that, some
just can't, and I think that is one of the big deciding points between who
likes IT and who throws it at the wall. One does need to do a little
practicing before deciding you are in the group that just can't work that
way, though. I spent a couple of decades recording cases in a cath lab,
where my eyes were kept continuously on both a pressure waveform and an ECG
waveform, verbally calling out pressure measurements and arrhythmias, while
my fingers were simultaneously first writing, and later typing, the complete
case log, occasionally jumping up to switch dials and hit buttons with just
a flick of the eyeballs to make sure the fingers and switches were in the
right place. I'm very used to splitting my visual attention and looking
somewhere besides at my typing line. I trained dozens of other people to do
it, and it always took several months to train them never to look at their
hands or the log they were creating during a case, but they all learned
eventually.

Marker keys are specific keys you use to indicate that IT should expand the
previously typed letters into either a word or a phrase. You use one marker
key for words and one for phrases, so duplications between abbreviations for
words and those for phrases are immaterial. I forget what IT's default
choices are, but I use ; for phrases and ' for words. There are a number of
other choices available, such as [. There are arguments for and against
various choices, and preference tends to be individual to the user. In any
case, there are certain features available when using marker keys to expand
that are not available if you use the delimiters space, tab, enter, and
various punctuation marks to trigger expansion, the way it is done in most
expanders. Using a marker key inserts any necessary space automatically, and
using markers allows IT to use continuations, which is linking chains of
shorts together by putting the most likely following word groups for what
you just typed at the top of your advisory window. It also lets you
"abbreviate the abbreviations" by moving up phrases in the selection window
the same way you can select words, by typing any combination of letters
unique to the phrase short (or word), without typing them all. Say you have
two phrases that are very similar but not identical. Let's use Rennie's
submissions of "patient is a well-developed, well-nourished white female and
"patient is a well-developed, well-nourished white female who is alert."
Say you happen to be using all initial letters for those phrases, and your
shorts are therefore piawdwnwf and piawdwnwfwia, and you know you are after
the second one. Depending on how your glossary is set up, you may be able
to select it without typing all the letters, but just the ones for the key
words that differentiate it from the many other similar phrases in there.
Typing pi to get into your "patient is" area of the list, and then typing d
for developed, n for nourished, wf for white female, w for who, and a for
alert will likely pull that specific phrase for you. So instead of typing
piawdwnwfwia; (13 characters), you could probably just type pidnwfwa; (9
characters) to select that same entry, as your advisory will keep skipping
ahead to only shorts containing the letters you have typed in the order you
have typed them as you add letters. Abbreviating the abbreviations is a
very advanced way to use IT, and you need to be familiar with your
glossaries before you do too much of it, but it's a way to pare even more
keystrokes once you reach that point.

How long it takes people to get up to speed with IT really depends on the
person and their current system. I moved to IT from AutoCorrect, pretty
early after I went back to transcribing, when I discovered there were such
things as MT expander programs out there. Since I'd transcribed on
typewriters previously, I wasn't working with any ingrained habits from
previous computer expanders. I had already figured that just hitting the
spacebar after letters was a sure way to get all kinds of things expanded by
AutoCorrect inadvertently--any short that constituted an English word, any
short that happened to be someone's initials or an acronym, etc. So I was
adding a keystroke to all my shorts to end them in the letter j. With IT, I
simply had to train myself to hit the home row key for my right hand little
finger instead of my index finger, ; instead of j, and then I wasn't even
using an extra keystroke, since that ; put in the following space. I think
that made the switch to marker keys much easier for me than it is for many
people. I think it took me about a month to get comfortable with IT, and
then to concentrate on building up a reasonable shorts system that worked
for me once I had escaped the limitations of AutoCorrect. I did start by
using it for just short stretches, and I think that is very good advice for
someone who is currently at high production with some other system. Read
the manual, experiment, try out the basics in the evening for a week or so,
get things set up to suit yourself, then try using it for your work for 15
minutes or half an hour a day for a week, so you aren't worrying about how
much it is cutting your line count to slow down to learn the new expander.
As you get familiar and pick up speed, increase your time transcribing with
it by a half hour every few days, and pretty soon you will be using it full
time without any big production loss in the learning interval.

However, if you are using SR to do your typing these days, you don't really
need to mess with any expander! Different strokes for different folks. 

-- 
Sheila
To reply to me, add the prefix real. to my address.
"Su" <.@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:_9UDd.2266$b23.2223@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
> "14tonks" <mail.2.14tonks@recursor.net> wrote in message
> news:34a03eF48o97sU1@individual.net...
> > Most people use the first initial of each word for phrases, Su, with
maybe
> > a
> > system to add in different verb endings and/or use some standard
> > two-letter
> > differentiating abbreviations for common variable words that start with
> > the
> > same first letter.  Using the first-letter system, you can just type the
> > phrase as you hear it, stopping after the first letter of each word,
which
> > does not require any memorization.
>
> But how do you remember all of the words phrases you have abbreviations
for?
> There are always subtle differences. I've read messages from people who
have
> IT and might set up five different "vocabularies" containing 18,000+
entries
> ... and they say they use them all.
>
> I've got many of the usual abbreviations:  chf, sob, ros <review of
> systems>, but then I get snagged on words where they are all so close in
> beginnings. What comes to mind is the "appro" series ... approximately,
> appropriate ... There's a bunch of them (can't remember at this time), and
I
> usually try to abbreviate the ones I know I'll use the mostl
>
> One I like, but I'm sure it's not a good idea, is putting a semicolon
after
> a single letter -
> a;    ascites
> c;    clamp
> d;    dissect
> f;     fatigue
>
> For some reason, I've chosen those words as the match up.
>
> > As I use IT, I would probably break some of Rennie's phrase
contributions
> > down into component phrases and use
> > continuations to keep going.  Also, in IT, if there is a lot of
> > duplication
> > in the middle of the shorts for abbreviated phrases, but unique endings,
> > one
> > can skip letters in the middle and still pull up the desired phrase if
you
> > are using marker keys.
>
> Now you're losing me. Yes, you're speaking clearly and concisely, but my
> mind is saying, "What is this lady talking about?"
>
> How do I explain this ... it's like the old days of learning to use a
> computer. No matter how much I read about things being like a filing
> cabinet, I couldn't understand the concept. Suddenly, I thought of the
bible
> (chapter, verse ...) and it all made sense.
>
>
> > (In other words, you can abbreviate the abbreviation
> > while typing it.)  The same is true of entries in the word rather than
the
> > phrase section of IT.  You can type any combo of letters that appear in
> > the
> > word, in the order they appear, to bring up the word, and then enter it
> > with
> > the appropriate marker key.  So you do not necessarily have to remember
> > the
> > "correct" abbreviation to type a short for a word.
>
> But isn't it true that you'll have to focus on the bottom of the screen to
> see the available choices, so you pick the one that you want? Particularly
> when you have overlapping abbreviations (i.e. "tpwt has multiple
meanings).
>
>
> > The first letter, relevant consonants, and last letter will pull up most
> > words with no
> > necessity to hit a number to select from a list of choices. Again, this
> > only
> > works if you are using marker keys to expand, rather than the space bar
> > and/or other delimiters. (And when you hit a marker key, you don't have
to
> > hit the space bar to get a space, so the keystrokes required are a
wash.)
>
> I never understood what a marker key was.
>
> Just curious ... when you started using IT, how long did it take for you
to
> get "up to speed?" IOW, your production reached the level that it was
before
> you started using it?
>
>