Phrase Entry Short Form

The Short form of a Phrase Entry can be considered as a dedicated abbreviation.

The default convention is to use the initial letters of its words, as in the following example:

but 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 also well define a Short form of sos for this same phrase:

When defining Phrase Entry 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.

With a short form of iyhqona, this allows multiple abbreviations, all starting with iy, such as:

With a short form of sos, the only possible abbreviations are:

Note that abbreviations skipping letters of the Short form, as iyna as iyqna in our first example, are not supported if you expand with the space bar.