Find and Replace
Mac Tip #266/25-Oct-2006
One of the essential tools of anyone working with text is Find and Replace, a function available in a great many programs. One MacTips subscriber has pointed out how useful it’s been for her while she’s been training herself to type only a single space after a fullstop.
My reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) writes:
Here’s a thought from someone who has been teaching herself to single space between sentences for a while now and still reverts to an automatic double now and then. You can use the ‘replace’ feature in Word at any stage in a document to ensure consistency. In the ‘find what’ part you put a fullstop followed by a double space and in ‘replace with’ you put a fullstop followed by a single space and then you click ‘change all’. It tells you how many changes its made so you can tell if you are improving!
Of course, the technique isn’t limited to Microsoft Word: try it in any program that lets you enter text.
Some programs (including Microsoft Word) let you use more sophisticated techniques too. The above Find and Replace works fine if you’ve typed two spaces, but what say three or four spaces crept in somewhere? You’d have to run the Find and Replace repeatedly until there were no replacements.
It would be magnificent to be able to look for a fullstop followed by more than one space — and in fact, you can. The next few tips will reveal some of the magic known as Regular Expressions.
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is jointly authored by Miraz Jordan and Maria Langer.
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