Abbreviations of the Bahá'í Writings

The bibliography is online in three formats: a Google spreadsheet
for online viewing, or Excel and PDF documents for downloading:

Google spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ec2EQKYIf1tDf2erpTlKK5sbmHfgtZcYqvDFuXFjzHw Excel file: abbreviations_bahai_writings.xlsx (last updated 2024 December) PDF: abbreviations_bahai_writings.pdf (last updated 2024 December)

Uses of these shortcuts include being used for using specially enabled features of web browsers (or other applications) to allow the user to type a shortcut representing a specific book followed by a string (such as a page or paragraph number or search item) and then be brought to that page or paragraph of the book (or to a set of search results within that item), in most cases to a page of the Sacred Writings here at Bahá'í Library Online.

For example, you might type control-L (or command-L) to be brought to your browser's URL window, then type a shortcut (say, "gwb" for the book Gleanings) followed by a space and a page number (say, "52"), and the program would bring you to bahai-library.com/writings/bahaullah/gwb/gleaningsall.html#52 , or in other words, to page 52 of Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh here at Bahá'í Library Online

In addition to the abbreviations above, adding the letter "p" to the shortcuts will usually bring one to a paragraph number for the text, if paragraphs exist in the document in question (e.g., "kap" could be used for "Kitáb-i-Aqdas paragraph"). In a few cases, "s" is used similarly to denote a section (e.g., "gwbs" for a section number of Gleanings).

If you prefer to get quickly to the Writings from menus rather than having to remember shortcuts, you might be interested in using Jump-to-page site which has a menu of all of the Sacred Writings, and then one simply needs to type a page (or paragraph or section) number and hit return to go to it directly.

RSS might also be of interest to power users.

Browser-specific instructions

For Chrome, follow the steps here. (There is also an extension which may offer more features, but it requires you to add the individual search engines manually.)

Firefox/Mozilla provides this functionality through Smart Keywords (formerly "Custom Keywords"). You can:

1. Download a set of our pre-made shortcuts for a bookmarks file here.
2. Save the file
3. Go to Firefox's Bookmarks Manager (i.e., "Manage Bookmarks...")
4. Choose "import" from the menu.
5. Choose the option to import from a file, and select the bookmarks file saved on your hard-drive.

You should then be able to use the shortcuts provided. You can find out what the shortcuts are by looking either at the Bookmarks properties, or by finding the bookmarks in the Bookmarks Manager and having "keywords" selected to appear in your view of the Bookmarks Manager columns. The keywords are listed here and are mostly intuitive, however, so you will probably not need to consult them often. Just remember to separate the keyword and search term (or page number) with a space.

Some Firefox add-ons are also available:

• Second Search makes your keyword-based search engines available under the addon's icon.
• Context Search allows you to add custom keywords through its interface such that you can right-click text on a page to send it to a custom keyword search.

Macintosh only

While I have not used these myself, it appears there are a few extensions you could use to get this functionality for Firefox:

• SafariKeywordSearch
• Omnikey

Some search engines, like DuckDuckGo themselves allow "bang" shortcuts which include some predefined searches, but in this case, any new shortcuts apply site-wide and require the search engine's approval.

Our wiki site has added these abbreviations to our "interwiki" list, so that it is possible for one to use the shortcuts in place of URL's within the wiki code. For example, to link to page 15 of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, one simply needs to type [[ka:15|]] into the wiki edit window (the double-brackets make a link and the pipe symbol after the number is shorthand for saying that the text preceding the pipe but after the colon is what should appear as the face of the link).

See our Test page for how shortcuts are used within the bahaiwritings: web protocol (for linking to the Writings without committing to using a particular app or site).