Phrase Entry Short Form

The short form of a Phrase Entry must contain two or more characters among the following:

Scope of Possible Abbreviations

For a Phrase Entry the short form defines the scope of its possible abbreviations.

An abbreviation

As you can see, unlike for Word Entries, for Phrase Entries the expansion plays no role as to which abbreviations can possibly be used.

Examples

For Phrase Entries the convention is to define short forms using the initial letters of its words.

For example:

Short Expansion

iyhqona

if you have questions or need assistance

However, there is no obligation to do so. You have complete freedom of choice, the only constraint being that the short form must have at least two characters. So you may well define a short form of sos for this same phrase:

Short Expansion

sos

if you have questions or need assistance

When defining short forms, keep in mind that the process of abbreviating is like performing a query on a database. The database is your glossary and when it grows, you will have better chances to retrieve the entries you are looking for, if they have longer short forms, simply because you will be able to type more letters to reduce the possible choices. Two‑letter short forms should only be used for Phrase Entries that you use very often.

A short form of i y h q o n a allows multiple abbreviations, all starting with i such as:

Short Abbreviation

i y h q o n a

i y

i y h q o n a

i y h q

i y h q o n a

i y n a

i y h q o n a

i y q n a

i y h q o n a

i y h q o n a

i y h q o n a

i h q n

i y h q o n a

i h q n a

With a short form of s o s the only possible abbreviations are:

Short Abbreviation

s o s

s o

s o s

s s

s o s

s o s