It is a fast moving world. Regardless of how you use the technology; for personal, business or a combination of both, the speed of your response is critical these days. Even this very article is posted using my BlackBerry Bold 9900 while commuting to school.

You may not aware that many smart phones comes with integrated “word replacement” programs. These programs substitute either a custom generated short form into its intended full word/sentence or replace commonly misspelled words. For example, during this post, the BlackBerry Word Substitution has replaced my “ur” with “your”. It saves time and energy. Specially if you are a professional on the go (such as Geologists, Engineers, Road Constructions, etc) it is a very valuable tool to streamline your emails and text messages.

Since you can create your own custom substitutions, I made short forms for all my email signatures. The phase “usig” for example will print my entire name, UCID, Email, Phone and Major. Such a life saver! I also use subs like r=are and ty=thank you.

However, these word substitution is a double edge sword. If you get used to composing complete coherent sentences using the aid of word subs(such as writing a paper using a pen and papers), you may automatically replace words with those subs on academic/work papers. If you did not notice that words are not subed in, you may become a victim of your own design.

Anyway I think if you use properly, word substitution is a great program. Use it and don’t abuse it!