For text shortcuts (both simple text and formatted text), the expansion occurs when a white-space key is entered after the shortcut. But, what if you want an expansion to occur immediately after some text, and without any white space? For example, suppose you have a shortcut called "yo" that expands to "-year-old", and you want to produce the text "7-year-old". If you type "7yo" you get no expansion. But if you type "7 yo" you get "7 -year-old" with a space. You could instead, type "7", then a space, then a backspace, then "yo". This will expand to "7-year-old". An easier way to get the desired result is to define a Command shortcut. Macro shortcuts work without having to type a whitespace key. For example, you could define a Ctrl+Q shortcut to produce "-year-old". This would allow you to avoid typing an extra space and backspace.
For this feature to work you must turn on Expansion Casing. To do this open the options dialog, select the "General" tab, find "Expansion Casing" and check the item "Typing shortcut as all caps expands text as all caps". This option only works for Simple Text shortcuts.
If this feature is on Fastfox will automatically upper-case the expansion if you upper-case the shortcut when you type. At the time you create the shortcut, it is not case sensitive, but when it is time to expand it, FastFox will take as its cue whether you upper-case the shortcut when you type it. If you type the first character in upper case, then FastFox will upper-case the first character in the expansion. If you type ALL of the letters in uppercase, then FastFox will upper-case the entire expansion. Please see the page on Automatic Case Sensitivity for a fuller explanation.