Good to hear you could tweak it to deal with your additional instances not shown in the samples you provided.
Although it doesn't affect the running of the macro, it is worthwhile cleaning up the comments in the code. The comments on this chunk for instance is not correct at all.
Code:
.ClearFormatting
.Text = "[:;, ^t]{1,5}zzEndBoldzz" 'inserts unique tag for punctuation before 'means'
.Replacement.Text = "zzEndBoldzz"
.MatchWildcards = True
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "zzEndBoldzz[:;, ^t]{1,5}" 'inserts unique tag for punctuation after 'means'
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "zzEndBoldzzmeans[:;, ^t]{1,5}" 'Additional word 'means' in para not removed
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
1. is removing up to 5 instances of spaces or punctuation characters in front of zzEndBoldzz
2. is removing up to 5 instances of spaces or punctuation characters following zzEndBoldzz
3. is removing 'means and trailing punctuation' if it appears immediately after zzEndBoldzz