Our previous newsletter mentioned our WordCounter program, which can now tell you how many times each word has been used in a document–and I promised to show you how that might be useful for editing. The newsletter also featured a macro that will create a concordance, or list of all words used, from a Word document. Next week, I’ll explain a very sneaky way to use that in editing, so stay tuned.
Have you ever needed to make a list of every word in a document? If so, here’s a macro that will do it for you automatically. Basically, the macro marks an index entry for every word in your document, generates the index, and removes the page numbers, leaving you with an alphabetical list of words used (at the end of the document). It’s sometimes interesting to see what Microsoft Word considers a “word”; periods, commas, and other unlikely items will be included.
Our previous article outlined a fairly lengthy Find and Replace routine to make sure inclusive (elided) numbers follow the style outlined in the Chicago Manual. Astute reader Andrew Lockton responded with a technique that is so important, it deserves a second article. Andrew suggested taking the “Find What Expression” wildcard, which takes the form \1, \2, and so on, and putting it not in the Replace With box, where it is ordinarily used, but in the *Find What* box–something I did not know was possible. Hats off to you, Andrew.