I need to find single quotation marks in my document, but I don't want to sift through hundreds, maybe thousands, of contractions. Can you add some logic to Find/Replace so it automatically skips specific text? Like this:

FIND ', EXCLUDE 's AND 'nt AND 've

I've already done the easy find/replace combos, but before printing, I want to do one last sweep.

Hello Bobosmite,

I just did not get your question. You need to get rid of all single quotation marks or get rid of some specific one?

The thing is that in simple find and replace field you can into some extend use wildcards but I am not sure whether such logical operators as you have stated would work. So that is why I need you to exactly define what you want to get rid of and what you want to have preserved in your document.

Mike
http://www.mswordhelp.com
how to microsoft word; philosophy, tutorials, tips and tricks

You can Find and Replace all <space>'
since none of 's AND 'nt AND 've are likely to start with a space.
OR
You can Replace 's with zzs then replace 'nt with zznt and then replace 've with zzve

Then find and replace '

Then Replace all zz with '

Sorry, phrasing this question gave me some problems. Let me try again.

I have a large document where the characters speak in Jamaican Patois so there are many sentences like this:

"you comin' wi' me 'cause 'im's no trust y' 'story'."

The text is pasted fom different sources. Imagine trying to fix a document that's been converted from .DOC to .PDF to .LIT and then back to .DOC.

I want to find all the single quotation marks in the document, but exclude some wildcards like: 's <apostrophe-S> as it's a possessive as already correct. Being able to exclude certain wildcards like 's, 'nt, 've while searching for all single quotation marks would make it much easier.

It's kind of like when you add a - <minus> to a string to exclude something in a search.

I ran across another quotation mark in the wrong direction, but this time when I copy/paste it into the find/replace box, it actually showed direction...like two tiny back slashes. Not the normal double-down hash marks ( " ). And this time it only found close-quotation marks in the document.

So...What is Word doing with quotation marks? How can I control this behavior? In the past I've copy/pasted into Notepad to strip all the document formatting, but that causes other, larger, problems.

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

Ah, so there is a setting to control quotations...thanks! I've never had any document that caused so much trouble. In the end, the automatic formatting contributed to the problem. The document had some serious formatting problems to begin with, but it's mostly sorted out. It looks really good on the screen, but you're eye misses so much.


I do use the replacement trick. I like using +++ .