Feb 17, 2025
PSA: Text replacement/expander tools for writers
So I've been frustrated with writing em dashes, because my small keyboard doesn't support numpad shortcuts.
I just discovered Espanso, a tool to create custom text replacements. (There are many similar tools, but I like that this is free and open source.) I added my preferred shortcut for an em dash ( :-- ), and voila!
It also has built in features like adding today's date, which is nice for titling my daily brainstorming docs.
I can see a lot more potential uses like writing out long character names or repeated phrases with a short abbreviation, and there are packages people have developed for things like emoji, special fonts, and rolling dice.
