This is something I've noticed time and again, when I want to reference friends -- or fan pages -- in my Wall posts / Facebook status updates or simply want to list a friend or two on a comment I'm leaving on someone else's update, it's all well and good to know about typing "@" followed by the first few letters of their name, but what if you don't want John Q. Public but just "John" there?

Rather by accident, I stumbled across how to solve that, and while it's not an amazing hack or complicated key sequence, it's good to know and easy to demonstrate.

To show you, I'll start with a Facebook comment that I'm leaving on my own earlier Wall status update, but since it's in response to a number of comments from my friends, i want to tag a specific person in this message and, as you'd expect, feel it'd be overly formal to have their full first and last name.

Here I am starting the comment...

I type in the "@" symbol followed by the first few letters of their name, and the system automatically pops up a list of possible matches:

I click on the correct match, Gary Moskoff, and it fills in their full name, with link, in the comment field:

Useful, but too formal for my tastes. To fix it (and here's the tip) simply use the backspace key and you'll find that the highlighted link text actually shrinks as you go:

Notice here that even though the first letter of his last name is still shown, the comment link system has already backed up to just highlight his first name. Perfect, really!

Once I've gotten back to just his first name, I continue typing my message and the result is exactly as I'd hope:

There ya go, a simple and darn useful input trick for your future Facebook posts!