AutoCorrect problem

[Sue]

I type medical reports all day, and doctor's dictate the patient's age in
each report, which must be typed, for example, "a 20-year-old female". I
have tried setting up AutoCorrect so that I could type something like "20
yearold" and have it correct the output to the above, where in AutoCorrect
yearold = "-year-old". The problem is that if I then type "20 yearold",
what I get is "20 -year-old" with a space before the first hyphen that should
not be there. If I try to type "20yearold", without the problematic space,
then AutoCorrect does recognize that a correction needs to be made. I do not
want to create entries for every possible age a doctor may dicatate,
especially as they often go with 20 1/2 or 54 3/4, etc. Is there any way to
add a symbol I can insert into the AutoCorrect entry to make AutoCorrect
'backspace' before it corrects to "-year-old"?

Thanks,
Sue

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This has come up before, and the answer is that you can create this
AutoCorrect entry:

-yo > -year-old

Then when you type 20-yo or 20½-yo, you will get 20-year-old or
20½-year-old.