I wrote this up because I am a terrible speller when it comes to books of the Bible.
I tried to included as many as possible, as many as I could think of, and also adapted from an ‘acceptable abbreviations’ list at Logos.com
Shortcut Guidelines
End with a . when accidental triggering is possible (Use of this is probably inconsistent. If you find annoyances, let me know)
Shortcuts should be in all lowercase (if we’re saving keystrokes, why use shift?)
Even if it can’t be abbreviated, offer to capitalize it. We can’t do much about “Ruth” but we can offer to correct “ruth” (however “acts” and “job” we just leave alone!)
Make shortcuts as short as possible. Why type “1thess” when you could type “1the”?
No Roman Numerals. We’re dealing with 1, 2, and 3 here, if you want to write out III for 3, be my guest, but I’m not going to help you. Roman numerals should be stabbed to death with an icepick and kicked into the gutter (with possible exceptions for wristwatches and crossword puzzles). So if you’re looking for an “iijohn” shortcut, you’ll have to add it your own.
The biggest problem in this release will probably be cases where I used a . instead of just leaving it off, or left it off here and kept it there in some inconsistent manner. Please feel free to nicely offer corrections/suggestions.
Naming
The snippets are divided up into 3 groups:
- “Books of the Bible - OT”
- “Books of the Bible - NT”
- “Deuterocanonicals (Apocrypha)”
I hope my Jewish friends will excuse the use of the “Old” Testament, it was just more convenient to write OT and NT.
They are also divided this way so that Jewish folks can use just the first group (feel free to rename it “Books of the Bible PERIOD!”).
Those who really want the Apocrypha are welcome to it. I did it mostly as an exercise in “Well, I’m already doing the others.”
“What am I getting?”
I hope that none of these snippets interfere with any existing shortcuts you might have, but if you want to see what you are getting, here’s a list of all of the shortcuts included:
Download the .textexpander Files Directly
NOTE: You can also copy the URLs below and add them directly via TextExpander:

(or just click on them in your browser and they will download as usual)
Those URLs will not change even if the snippet files are updated in the future. You can even set TextExpander to automatically update in the future, so you’ll get changes/fixes/improvements without any further effort.
Versioning
I have intentionally labeled these as “v 1.0” because I suspect there will be a version 2 (or at least 1.1!)
(Like when someone points out that I shouldn’t correct “ruth” to “Ruth” because someone might want to type “ruthless”.)
“What kind of a dunderhead are you? I can’t believe you used X as a shortcut for Y or didn’t use Y as a shortcut for X!!!”
I welcome your calmly worded constructive feedback in the comments section below.