I'm curious, did you replace the single quotes inside 's AND 'nt AND 've with the pair of z's to eliminate them from the next Find and Replace? If not, why? It is so simple.

In version 2003, you can turn off smart quotes... Tools > Autocorrect Options. Go to the Autoformat as You Type tab.
Untick 'Replace straight quotes with smart quotes".

Examples of wildcards include *, ?, and @.... 'nt, 's, and 've are not wildcards. Here is a list of wildcards, including how to to exclusionary searches -- [!characters here]. But I don't know if you can make it work for this.
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm