Good abbreviations

To evaluate the quality of Lesshand's abbreviations, we have developed three different numeric scores. Each score attempts to approximate some important quality of an abbreviation.

• Effort approximates how much time and energy an abbreviation saves. Good abbreviations save lots of effort.
• Memorability approximates how easy it is to learn and remember an abbreviation. Good abbreviations are highly memorable.
• Ambiguity approximates how ambiguous a given abbreviation is. Good abbreviations have low ambiguity, i.e., are unambiguous.

For each score, there is some threshold that abbreviations must pass to be included in Lesshand. These thresholds are fundamentally arbitrary, but each seems to include enough abbreviations to be useful while excluding a decent number of undesirable abbreviations.