If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
finding missing periods in long documents and in included tables, then inserting
I am reformatting a large number of long documents and have completed much of
the work, including placing some of the content in tables. I am now searching for instances of missing periods and inserting them. I can use find and replace to find the end of a word followed by a paragraph mark, then manually insert the period if it is actually a sentence (some of these instances are fragments and I do not want to insert periods following them). This works (painfully) for most text that is not within a table, but within a table I need a different solution. Within the table, if a hard return has not been entered, there is no paragraph mark. Instead, you see a small, grey box. I have not found any way to find the end of a word followed by one of these. And, as above, some of these instances are fragments and will not need periods. Can anyone help me to 1 - find and replace missing periods in text more easily? 2 - find and replace missing periods in table cells? I can not do or use any VBA programming to accomplish this. Thanks for any help! Wendy |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
finding missing periods in long documents and in included tables, then inserting
For the first question... An additional way to try to find sentences without
periods would be to look for the following pattern: [lowercase letter][space(s)][uppercase letter] ....on the theory that capitals that follow lowercases stand a good chance of being the first word in a sentence (although, they could as easily be proper names). To do this, in the Find and Replace dialog: Find what[a-z])( @)([A-Z]) Replace with:\1.\2\3 Make sure Use Wildcards is checked. The Replace with uses \1 - \3 tokens for the three parenthetical expressions in the Find What: field. It then inserts a period at the end of the orphaned sentence, then puts in the space(s) and the letter that begins the following sentence. This will find a number of non-sentence breaks. There's also a chance that if a sentence should end with a question mark, this particular replace can only do one punctuation mark at a time... a period in this instance. -- Herb Tyson MS MVP Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along. "Wendy via OfficeKB.com" u14628@uwe wrote in message news:5570aa9c1bbc0@uwe... I am reformatting a large number of long documents and have completed much of the work, including placing some of the content in tables. I am now searching for instances of missing periods and inserting them. I can use find and replace to find the end of a word followed by a paragraph mark, then manually insert the period if it is actually a sentence (some of these instances are fragments and I do not want to insert periods following them). This works (painfully) for most text that is not within a table, but within a table I need a different solution. Within the table, if a hard return has not been entered, there is no paragraph mark. Instead, you see a small, grey box. I have not found any way to find the end of a word followed by one of these. And, as above, some of these instances are fragments and will not need periods. Can anyone help me to 1 - find and replace missing periods in text more easily? 2 - find and replace missing periods in table cells? I can not do or use any VBA programming to accomplish this. Thanks for any help! Wendy |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
finding missing periods in long documents and in included tables, then inserting
Herb - thanks for your response. I tried your suggestion and it's a nice
solution for many situations, but these documents are instructions which include a lot of references to buttons. menus, fields and screens, all of which are capitalized, and many of which are multi-word. Here's an example: "Click the Display button. The Display Options dialog box displays " Note the missing period at the end of the second sentence. Any other suggestions? Thanks, Wendy Herb Tyson [MVP] wrote: For the first question... An additional way to try to find sentences without periods would be to look for the following pattern: [lowercase letter][space(s)][uppercase letter] ...on the theory that capitals that follow lowercases stand a good chance of being the first word in a sentence (although, they could as easily be proper names). To do this, in the Find and Replace dialog: Find what[a-z])( @)([A-Z]) Replace with:\1.\2\3 Make sure Use Wildcards is checked. The Replace with uses \1 - \3 tokens for the three parenthetical expressions in the Find What: field. It then inserts a period at the end of the orphaned sentence, then puts in the space(s) and the letter that begins the following sentence. This will find a number of non-sentence breaks. There's also a chance that if a sentence should end with a question mark, this particular replace can only do one punctuation mark at a time... a period in this instance. I am reformatting a large number of long documents and have completed much of [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] Wendy -- Message posted via OfficeKB.com http://www.officekb.com/Uwe/Forums.a...gdocs/200510/1 |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
finding missing periods in long documents and in included tables, then inserting
A manual proofread would be the best solution.
It's surprising how many other inconsistencies you'll find when you do that. Kathy "Wendy via OfficeKB.com" u14628@uwe wrote in message news:55bc018645587@uwe... Herb - thanks for your response. I tried your suggestion and it's a nice solution for many situations, but these documents are instructions which include a lot of references to buttons. menus, fields and screens, all of which are capitalized, and many of which are multi-word. Here's an example: "Click the Display button. The Display Options dialog box displays " Note the missing period at the end of the second sentence. Any other suggestions? Thanks, Wendy Herb Tyson [MVP] wrote: For the first question... An additional way to try to find sentences without periods would be to look for the following pattern: [lowercase letter][space(s)][uppercase letter] ...on the theory that capitals that follow lowercases stand a good chance of being the first word in a sentence (although, they could as easily be proper names). To do this, in the Find and Replace dialog: Find what[a-z])( @)([A-Z]) Replace with:\1.\2\3 Make sure Use Wildcards is checked. The Replace with uses \1 - \3 tokens for the three parenthetical expressions in the Find What: field. It then inserts a period at the end of the orphaned sentence, then puts in the space(s) and the letter that begins the following sentence. This will find a number of non-sentence breaks. There's also a chance that if a sentence should end with a question mark, this particular replace can only do one punctuation mark at a time... a period in this instance. I am reformatting a large number of long documents and have completed much of [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] Wendy -- Message posted via OfficeKB.com http://www.officekb.com/Uwe/Forums.a...gdocs/200510/1 |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Tables becoming corrupt in short documents | joelgee | Tables | 5 | September 20th, 2005 04:01 PM |
Automate Word Document Creation - VB.NET | Mike Cantalupo | General Discussions | 0 | August 29th, 2005 04:05 PM |
Is there a way to locate a specific Folder? | Eldraad | General Discussion | 8 | August 10th, 2004 05:46 AM |
Rich Text Spell Check | Stephen Lebans | General Discussion | 0 | July 27th, 2004 01:03 AM |