Formatting Document with Find and Replace: Tips for Academic Writing, Summaries of Microsoft Word Skills

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FORMATTING WITH FIND AND REPLACE Contents A word on wildcards Remove double spaces Remove all rogue spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs Remove double line returns Change hyphens used as parentheses to dashes Change tabbed paragraph indents to proper line indents (using Word’s ‘Styles’) Change a hyphen in a number span Find lower-case letters at the beginning of paragraphs Find a paragraph that ends with no punctuation Find a full point followed by a lower-case letter Add or remove spaces between initial capital letters in names Find, add or remove commas in bracketed citations Changing date styles with wildcard searches Author in-text citations: and or & Change straight quotes to curly Remove unnecessary spaces before or after punctuation A word on wildcards When carrying out wildcard searches, it’s best to ensure that Track Changes is switched off. Track Changes can interfere with the find/replace function such that your code strings won’t be able to locate the problems, or, if they do, won’t make changes in the correct format. Remove double spaces • Open FIND AND REPLACE (Ctrl H on PC). • Type two spaces in the FIND WHAT box and one space in the REPLACE WITH box. • You can then globally change all double spaces to single, or move through your document, reviewing each instance as you go and deciding whether to amend. Remove all rogue spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs • Open FIND AND REPLACE (Ctrl H on PC). • Type a space followed by ^p in the FIND WHAT box, and ^p in the REPLACE WITH box. • Go to the ‘Home’ tab so that the ‘Styles’ pane is visible • Double click on a word in the now-indented paragraph • Click on the small arrow in the bottom-right-hand corner of the ‘Styles’ pane • A window will open. Click on the ‘Create New Style’ button highlighted below • Another window will open – here you can name your new style, and define any properties via the ‘Format’ button If you decide to change the font, letter size, spacing, colour, indentation, etc., of a particular text element, you need only do so once – by amending the style rather than the individual lines of text in your document. Change a hyphen in a number span • Ensure Track Changes is switched off • Open FIND AND REPLACE (Ctrl H on PC) • Check the use wildcards box • Text for FIND WHAT box: ([0-9])-([0-9]) • Text for REPLACE WITH box: \1^=\2 Here’s a quick explanation of what those find/replace strings mean: • FIND WHAT box: ‘Find any number between 0 and 9, followed by a hyphen, followed by any other number between 0 and 9.’ • REPLACE WITH box: ‘Keep the information you found in the first set of round brackets, replace the hyphen with an en dash, and keep the information you found in the second set of round brackets.’ Find lower-case letters at the beginning of paragraphs • Ensure Track Changes is switched off • Open FIND AND REPLACE (Ctrl H on PC) • Check the use wildcards box • Text for FIND WHAT box: ^013[a-z] • Use the ‘Find Next’ button to check every instance Find a paragraph that ends with no punctuation If you have bulleted lists in your document, your chosen style may not ask for full points. It’s nice to be able to check though, just in case you’ve accidently omitted closing punctuation: • Ensure Track Changes is switched off • Open FIND AND REPLACE (Ctrl H on PC) • Check the use wildcards box • Text for FIND WHAT box: [a-z]^013 • Use the ‘Find Next’ button to check every instance Find a full point followed by a lower-case letter • Ensure Track Changes is switched off • Open FIND AND REPLACE (Ctrl H on PC) • Check the use wildcards box • Text for FIND WHAT box: . ([a-z]) • Use the ‘Find Next’ button to check every instance Three authors: changing (Smith, Ramesh and Harnby, 2016) to (Smith, Ramesh & Harnby, 2016) • Text for FIND WHAT box: [^40]([A-z]@), ([A-z]@) and ([A-z]@), ([0-9]{4})[^41] • Text for REPLACE WITH box: (\1, \2 & \3, \4) Even simpler, if you have a file with a mixture of two, three or more authors, this string will enable you to ignore everything but the final two: • Text for FIND WHAT box: ([A-z]@) and ([A-z]@), ([0-9]{4})[^41] • Text for REPLACE WITH box: \1, \2 & \3) Change straight quotes to curly Make sure Track Changes is switched off. Then select all the text in your document. Now use the following find/replace strings for single and double quotation marks respectively: • Text for FIND WHAT box: ‘ • Text for REPLACE WITH box: ‘ and • Text for FIND WHAT box: “ • Text for REPLACE WITH box: “ Remove unnecessary spaces before or after punctuation You can locate rogue spaces before and after a range of punctuation marks – in one fell swoop. Make sure USE WILDCARDS is selected: Find spaces after opening brackets (square and round) and opening quotation marks (single and double) • Text for FIND WHAT box: ([[\(\(“‘])<space> • Text for REPLACE WITH box: \1 Find spaces before full points, commas, question marks, semi-colons, closing quotation marks, (single and double), closing brackets (square and round), and colons • Text for FIND WHAT box: <space>([.,;:\?\!”’\)\]]) • Text for REPLACE WITH box: \1