Snippets and the Snippets glossary

The question about Snippets in Instant Text 9 has been previously asked on this forum by jsampson.

Let me try to expand on the answer Emmanuel gave at the time.

A snippet is a snippet glossary entry which is an expansion with a snippet name, not a short form. You can use a snippet (the expansion) in any of your expansion glossaries by referencing it by its name via the Snippet command when you create a new glossary entry in the Add Glossary Entry window.

The snippet glossary is one of the special glossaries of Instant Text 9. It is not the same glossary type as the expansion glossaries you have mostly used until now. You cannot include this special glossary to your expansion glossaries.
In an expansion glossary you can have the same short form for different expansions. In the snippet glossary the snippet name is unique and references one unique expansion.

A snippet can be text, a picture, commands, etc.

Let's take an example like a letterhead or a company address:
letterhead will be the snippet name;
your letterhead itself will be the expansion;

company_address will be the snippet name;
your address itself will be the expansion;

Anytime you use the snippet names in one of your expansion glossary entries, it will expand to your letterhead or your company address respectively. If for any reason your letterhead or company address changes, you just change the expansion in the snippet glossary, and all glossary entries containing these snippets will be updated.

If you include the #Snippets\Commands.xglo to your #Snippets shell glossary you will have a whole selection of commands to choose from, without having to memorize all the shortcut keys or Instant Text menu items that execute the commands. You use those snippets as you see fit. No need to use use them all! :-) The suggestions may give you ideas to use some of them when you build your editing glossary.

In your editing glossary, for instance, you may want to have an expansion that adds a period and capitalizes the next word with the right number of spaces. The entry could be:
.{Space}{Right}{Shift Ctrl Right}{Capitalize}{NoSpacing}
or using a snippet of the Commands.xglo:
.{Space}{Right}{Snippet}capitalize-next-word{/Snippet}{NoSpacing}

Both entries will do the job!