Is there a way to automatically add silence between words or small sentences in a recording?

I use a Contour Shuttle and I can assign a multi step macro to one of its keys, several mouse drivers also let you program a button with a macro, this might speed up adding your silence sections if you could macro Ctrl+2 and Ctrl+V.

No I'm afraid there isn't. You might have thought that it was possible to do this with a Favorite, but unfortunately - and really annoyingly - there is no way to start a Favorite action at the cursor position. It's either got to be relative to the start or finish of the file, or use a ridiculous 'relative' position that is a fixed percentage of the way through whatever file you've opened. Which means that it happens at a fixed time in any given file, and you have no idea where it's going to be! You can add processing to a time selection using the 'relative' setting of course - but you have to make the selection first...

This is, of course, as useful as a chocolate teapot. The only workaround that I can think of (and I believe I've made this suggestion before) is to create a file of 5 seconds of silence, and copy it to one of the five available clipboards (see Edit menu). If for instance you decide to have it in clipboard 2 then you select this by using Ctrl+2 and then do the save. You can now go back to clipboard 1 and use it normally if you want. When you want to insert your 5 seconds of silence, just go Ctrl+2 and then Ctrl+V to paste it. No you can't turn that into a Favourite either...

Yeah, it's crap. Sorry I haven't got a better answer.