Find and Replace queries

[Daav]

Hello,

I’m currently familiarising myself with MS Word’s Find and Replace as I have three fairly long reports I’m proofreading. I’m up-to-speed with F&R basics, but I’m struggling to come up with Wildcard character strings for the following:

• Delete multiple spaces within words



• Delete multiple spaces before punctuation
(I’ve got a workable string for ‘after punctuation’ but not for ‘before’)

• Delete blank lines between paragraphs

If anyone ‘out there’ can assist, I would be very grateful.

Thanks in anticipation,

David

[Guessed]

It is kind of important for proofreaders to be accurate. What does 'delete multiple spaces within words' mean. Generally spaces go between words and that is how we know where one word stops and the next one begins.
In all the following steps, pay careful attention to the spaces between the "quote" marks. Note the last one won't catch instances where the 'empty' paragraph actually contains a space or a tab. You might want another couple of replaces to fix them first.

1. Find "[ ]{2,}"
Replace " "
Wildcards ON

2. Find " ([,.:;]{1})"
Replace "\1"
Wildcards ON

3. Find "^p^p"
Replace "^p"
Wildcards OFF

[Daav]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I'll try the three character strings you suggest.

'Delete multiple spaces within words' - a bit strange, perhaps, I know, but in one of the reports I'm proofreading there are a few sections that, for some reason, have character spaces within some of the words, for example, 'th an ks for you r repl y' rather than 'thanks for your reply'. I can always just manually correct them; involves a bit more time, but there's not that many.

Thanks again!