Tools

Here’s a list of basic regular expressions/MS Word wildcard search strings, useful for academic copyediting.  Please use with caution, since there are often edge cases where they will misfunction. Switch off Track Changes before using them, as Word often transposes the Replace field otherwise.

Find Straight Quotes and Apostrophes

A normal search for a single or double quote mark will bring up curly (“smart”) quotes/apostrophes as well as straight (dumb) ones.

To search only for the straight ones, open the search dialogue box, enable Wildcards searching, and search for

^034 (double quotes)
^039 (single quote)

Replace a bracketed year with a year preceded and followed by periods [(2000) to . 2000.]

\(([0-9]{4})\)
. \1.

The same, but with an index letter for the year ((2000a) to . 2000a.)

\(([0-9]{4}[abc])\)
. \1.

Replaces hyphen between two numbers with en-dash.

([0-9])-([0-9])
\1^=\2

Closing quotation mark, comma, or fullstop ordering from Oxford to Chicago style – note: does not find Smart Quotes.

(“)([,.])
\2\1

Same as previous, finding a smart quote
(”)([,.])
\2\1

Closing quotation mark, comma or fullstop from Chicago to Oxford style (not Smart Quotes)

([,.])(“)
\2\1

Replace smart single quotes with smart double quotes (be careful with this one in case there are apostrophes around).

‘(*)’
“\1”

Replace smart double quotes with smart single quotes

“(*)”
‘\1’

Change  “Vol. #, No. #,” to “# (#):”

, Vol. ([0-9]{1,}), No. ([0-9]{1,}),
\1 (\2):

Author-date method; in text, change comma-separated author list to semicolon separated.
([0-9]{4}), ([! ]{1,} [0-9]{4})
\1; \2