Yes, thanks to Chris. abc is very useful for hammering bits of choir music alto lines into my skull. Just putting it in and checking it is right does half the job, but I can chop it small and go over the difficult bits or play longer sections.
I'm slowly getting quicker at writing it.
All this learning by ear / from dots debate doesn't mention one thing. We all first learnt to SING by ear but many of us were first taught to PLAY from the dots. But in practise we all use both methods for both. Our ear tells us if we've played a wrong note and the dots are needed to check our singing (via an instrument or computer if sight reading is poor)