Using AutoText

If you are an experienced Microsoft Word user, you may already use the AutoText facility. At its simplest, this is a way of entering a word, sentence or block of text that you need to type often using a simple abbreviation. For example, when I type “sig” on my computer and press the function key F3, the “sig” is replaced by “Yours Sincerely,... D.E. Flynn” set out as one would wish to find it at the bottom of a letter. I have adapted the AutoText facility to enable you to enter some common Greek words in their accented form simply by typing the correct letters and pressing F3 (or possibly more easily, CTRL + k). For example, if you type the letters of “kai”, then press F3, what you typed will be replaced instantly by the Greek version of “kai” including the grave accent.

For your convenience, I have incorporated 250 common Greek words which do not much vary in their pattern of accentuation. These are the definite article, prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions and some indeclinable numerals. Of course, even these sometimes change their accentuation. If you need to change the accentuation from the default final grave accent, simply insert the correct version using the usual shortcuts or the toolbar.

Using AutoCorrect

There is a powerful tool inside Microsoft Word called AutoCorrect which corrects typing errors on the fly. For example, if you accidentally type “teh” when you meant to type “the”, the computer spots your error and tactfully inserts the correct spelling. This facility can be harnessed to type common Greek words with their awkward breathing and accent combinations simply by typing the letters of the word itself or some shortened version of it. It is like using AutoText without the extra F3 keypress. There is a possible problem with this technique, however.

Unlike AutoText entries, AutoCorrect entries are global : that is to say, they are shared by all Word documents and so are not private to your Greek Template. Accordingly, if a certain combination of Greek letters mirrors a combination of equivalent English letters that you use in your normal word-processing, AutoCorrect will blindly attempt the replacement, not realising its intervention will not be appreciated. However, it would have been a great pity to give up this powerful aid to Greek typing, so I devised a way round the problem.

When you open a document based on the Greek Template and display the Toolbar, you will see two fat buttons on the right labelled Load AutoCorrect and Reset AutoCorrect.

When you press Load AutoCorrect, a macro under the bonnet copies all the Greek AutoText entries in the Greek Template into the AutoCorrect part of the global template. This means that, when you type any of the Greek words listed under AutoText and enter a space or a punctuation mark, the AutoCorrect facility will spring into action automatically and replace it with the default accented version. No more pressing F3, you see! (If the default is not appropriate in a given context, simply enter the correct accentuation then press the spacebar. AutoCorrect will ignore this unfamiliar version of the word and will not try to tinker with it behind your back.)

When you have finished your Greek session, you can purge the Greek entries from AutoCorrect by pressing the other fat button on the Toolbar labelled Reset AutoCorrect. To help you remember, I have arranged things so that a special warning pops up when you close your Greek document asking you if you want to reset AutoCorrect.