I use TextPander but I don't have a whole lot of shortcuts yet but the ones that I do have are:

"mdate" (dang TP wouldn't let me put it there without the quotes) for military date of 060510.
"hhead" for headers for papers that I write.
"ddate" for the full date

I know some people use it for their passwords and coders use it for code snippets which would be a godsend I would imagine.

I guess I could put the b/c and w/ since I use them all the time when I take notes. :)

Until you said that, it hadn't occurred to me to put lorem ipsum text in a textpander shortcut. That is the best thing ever! now "lorips" yields me a nice paragraph like so:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.

I had to use it one more time...

I love TextPander.

My abbreviations include:

cde@ = my full email address (cde are my initials)
[two hyphens] = [em-dash]
[three periods] = [ellipses]
teh = the
libid = [my library card id number]
ustid = [my Univ. of St. Thomas id number]
wwwst = http://www.stthomas.edu/ [the domain for websites at my work]

I also use it for custom signatures on my email messages:
ustsig = [signature for internal messages (ust=Univ. of St. Thomas)]
profsig = [signature for external messages (prof=professional)]
farsig = [signature for messages re: Fine Arts Review committee]
etc.

I also use it for the entire text of "form letter" emails I have to send out occasionally.

I also have a scanned version of my signature, which I can paste into word-processed letters with [fullname]sig.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about various text-automation apps, but I’m personally partial to AutoHotKey. It does the same things as the others, and the scripting language is very powerful. I use it to autotext most of my email at work, and to hotkey various websites I have to access there.

Since I do customer-service work some of the time, most of the abbreviations I use go to that:

• cm == customer
• cuc == customer called to
• unp == text block of a request to various warehouses to unpick products from shipping lists so I can modify orders
• cd == “customer data” text block of customer demographics
• ]d == current date/time

And so on.