In the case of a wallet generated with the BIP39 standard, the correct thing to do, if you want or need to use only 4 letters for each word, is to use the first 4 letters
You cannot abbreviate the word. You have to use exactly the first 4 letters as they will not be repeated. There is only one possible option and you'll be safe to use this wallet
I am aware the first 4 letters of each word are what is required to write down. Even in the washers method there is usually no space for all the letters, so only the first 4 to 5 letters are stamped. However, this does not mean human mistakes are impossible.
Paranoid as I am of everything, I never store a seed without checking at LEAST three to five times whether I wrote down the correct words. Yet, there was one instance where I mistyped a word into another that also worked and it took me a pretty long time before I finally luckily found out where the problem was.