Using the "@" in shortcuts
The built-in shortcut routines have an undocumented feature (that some refer to as the "@" macro) that allows you to automatically insert the date, time, or date and time into a shortcut. To do this, place an "at" sign ("@") at the beginning of the Shortcut Text when defining a shortcut. To create the @ sign in Graffiti, tap the screen once to indicate punctuation, and sketch a circle, as if you were writing a lower-case "o". Now, to insert the time, place the character "T" anywhere in the shortcut. When you issue this shortcut, the current time will be inserted at that spot in the text. Using the "D" character results in the date being inserted, and if you'd like both date and time, simply use both characters.

Looking at the built-in shortcuts that use this macro you'll notice that they also use the "S" in addition to the "D" and "T". This is not required, but can be used if it will help you to later understand what this shortcut is used for.

As you experiment with using the "@" macro, in shortcuts, you'll soon discover a couple of things about its use. First of all, you've got to place the "@" sign as the first character of the Shortcut Text. Second, if you try to use more than one "substitution" character (the "D" or "T"), you'll discover that only the first one will be substituted by the date and/or time.

Uses for the @ shortcut
Now that you know how to use the "@" sign in shortcuts, you're probably asking yourself what could this possibly be used for. Here are some ideas:

• Keeping a daily journal or any type of notes that you'd want the time recorded at each entry.

• Meeting notes. I attach a note to each meeting entry in the Date Book, which contains the start and stop times for the meeting (which I've got set up as two separate shortcuts).

• I've heard of some folks using the generic shortcut DS (which inserts the date) at the beginning of Date Book and To Do list entries, to show them later when each was added.

Other "shortcut" applications
In addition to the built-in shortcut feature, there are a couple of other add-on applications that will give you the ability to quickly insert or replace text. These are CorrectHack and QuickText, and I'll briefly go over each one and the differences between it and the built-in shortcut feature.

CorrectHack is a HackMaster extension (For more details on the HackMaster application, see http://www.daggerware.com) that closely resembles the AutoCorrect feature found in desktop word processors. You can enter words to be "corrected" and as soon as you enter those words on your PalmPilot, they will be replaced with the specified word. So, if you found yourself always entering "llass" instead of "class" ("C" and "L" are very easy to mix up using Graffiti), you might want to add a CorrectHack entry that would correct that to "class".