Hi everyone,



I am curious about a find and replace in Word 2013.

I am searching for all instances of a period followed by one space and a capital letter, as follows (without the quotes, and wildcards are turned on): ". [A-Z]"

Is it possible to replace this query with a period followed by two spaces, followed by the actual letter that the search finds for every instance (so of course that letter will vary)?

Any ideas are welcome, thank you in advance!

Search for
(. )([A-Z])
Replace with
\1 \2

See http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm

__________________
Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com

Awesome! Thanks!

fwiw … Pretty well every time I've seen it mentioned, the idea of "full stop followed by two spaces" has been condemned as a left-over from typewriters :-}

Indeed it is, but there are still organisations that have not woken up to the era of word processing and proportionally spaced fonts

__________________
Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com

My take on two spaces at the end of a sentence is that it tends to make it more readable, particularly in text that contains names and other capitalized words, or if the text contains abbreviations. I find that the doubled space creates a clear visual break between sentences in a way a period alone does not, no matter the font. I suppose it does depend somewhat on the font.

Bruce, for a fuller exploration of the two-space question, I would refer you to an older (very short) book: The Mac is Not a Typewriter, 2nd Edition, by Robin Williams.
and
Why you should use one space after each sentence

I can do whatever the situation requires, but in this context I was merely expressing a personal preference. I realize it is a minority view.

Yup, that's where I first came across the idea … after cutting my teeth on mainframe publishing programs that ran off plain text files with an 80-character line length and would have ruthlessly deleted any spaces they didn't agree with anyway. Happy days :-}

I agree with using only one space. Unfortunately, APA 6 has gone back to recommending two spaces for copy manuscripts to aid readability for readers who have to read a lot of draft text throughout the day (given that the APA manual is geared toward copy manuscripts).

To make matters worse, many organizations, schools, etc., misinterpret this recommendation and apply it to final manuscripts, which forces editors and formatters to ensure two spaces after end-of-sentence punctuation. So the find and replace above is quite helpful. Note that you should first find " ^w" and replace with " " without the quotes so that you are starting with a period with one space after each sentence (given that some users have entered 3 or more spaces after sentences), then run the replace all given by gmayor above.

Update. APA came to their senses in the 7th ed., reverting to one space after punctuation unless the publisher asks otherwise.

With proportionally spaced text two spaces makes it harder to read and ugly, IMO.