Find and Replace

Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace is your friend as an editor, and you can keep it as simple or make it as complicated as you like. If you’re interested in more complicated Find and Replace operations that involve wildcards there are lots of resources to help you, from a webpage by Microsoft experts to Jack Lyon’s Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word.

You can employ Find and Replace in simple but effective ways. At the beginning of your job, use it to get rid of things like double spaces between sentences (type two spaces in Find, type one space in Replace), and spaces before question marks, exclamation marks, colons, etc. (type a space then the mark in Find, type just the mark in Replace).

However, remember that changing all ‘ize’ endings to ‘ise’ ones will result in words like ‘sise’ for ‘size’, so use caution with spelling changes. Also, monitor context closely. You may end up changing text in a company name or a quotation from a published work. Both will need to keep their style.

Find and Replace is best done early in a job so that you then have the chance to review all your changes and pick up any unexpected results.