title: Emacs: abbrev-mode not expanding simple abbrev, possible causes?
body: <p>I would like to assign the string 'target="_blank"' to the abbreviation 'tgt' as I use this a lot and it's annoying to have to type out each time.</p>
  
  <p>The string above probably needs escapes and so on, so as a simpler starting point I have tried to assign 'target' to 'tgt'. Despite switching on <code>abbrev-mode</code> and defining this as a global abbrev, if I type 'tgt' and hit space, nothing happens. If I do <code>M-x list-abbrevs</code> I get this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>(global-abbrev-table)
  
  "target"       1    "tgt"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So it seems to be recorded. I would have expected tgt to be expanded to target when I hit a space after tgt, but that doesn't happen. What am I missing? Have I completely misunderstood the nature of abbrevs? I have looked at the <a href="http://emacswiki.org/emacs/AbbrevMode" rel="nofollow">Emacs wiki page</a> but like many Emacs pages it gives a number of complex solutions and annoyingly sparse coverage of the basics.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: embarassingly enough this looks like it was a combination of the wrong abbrev file and an assignment that was reversed, so that typing 'target' produced 'tgt'. I now have 'tgt' producing 'target="_blank"' as desired. Apologies everybody.</p>
  
  <p>However, I now have a related question. This abbreviation expands when I hit space and typically I do not want a space after the 'target="_blank"' string. Is there a way to automatically remove the space?</p>