Lyonizing Word: Using the “Find What Expression” Wildcard

by Jack Lyon

Rich Adin recently sent me an interesting challenge. He was using his EditTools Journal feature to mark journal titles in references. The power behind that useful tool comes from lists of incorrectly styled references with corresponding correctly styled references. He creates a separate list for each reference style. The list he sent me was for AMA style, in which the reference uses the PubMed abbreviation followed by a period. It looks like something like this:

A Gesamte Exp Med, | cyan -> Z Gesamte Exp Med.
A Gesamte Exp Med. | cyan -> Z Gesamte Exp Med.
A JR | cyan -> AJR Am J Roentgenol.
A M A Arch Ind Hyg Occup Med. | green
A of LTC | cyan -> Ann Longterm Care.
A of LTC, | cyan -> Ann Longterm Care.
A of LTC. | cyan -> Ann Longterm Care.
A&D | cyan -> Aging Dis.
A&D, | cyan -> Aging Dis.
A&D. | cyan -> Aging Dis.
A. M. A. Arch. Derm | cyan -> AMA Arch Derm.
A. M. A. Arch. Derm, | cyan -> AMA Arch Derm.
A. M. A. Arch. Derm. | cyan -> AMA Arch Derm.

The text to the left of the pipe (|) is how the entry might (incorrectly) appear in the references supplied by the author; the entry to the right is how it should appear. Each entry includes a color, either cyan or green, which tells the program to use that color in highlighting the reference.

Rich knew that some of the entries included duplicates, like this:

Arch Intern Med. | cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

In other words, the item on the left was identical to the item on the right, which meant that it shouldn’t be marked. That also meant the entry didn’t need to be on the list at all. But the real problem was that Rich’s reference list included more than 117,000 entries!

Rich’s challenge? Use wildcard find and replace to remove such entries, thus shortening the list and preventing unnecessary marking.

First, let’s look at that entry again to see what we might need to do:

Arch Intern Med. | cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

There’s a pipe symbol (|) in the middle, which gives us something to differentiate the left side of the entry from the right side of the entry. So we might set up the first part of our wildcard string to look like this:

([!^013]@) |

That tells Word to find any character except a carriage return, an unspecified number of times, until it comes to a space followed by a pipe symbol.

The wildcard for a carriage return is:

^013

The wildcard for “except” is:

!

And we have to put both of those in square brackets so Word knows that’s a set of characters. (After all, [!^013] finds any character, no matter what it is, unless it’s a carriage return.)

The wildcard for “an unspecified number of times” is:

@

Finally, we have to put all of that into a “group” by enclosing it with parentheses. And that’s important. You’ll see why in a minute.

Testing that part of our search string, we see that, yes, indeed, it finds the following:

Arch Intern Med. |

In fact, it finds the beginning of each entry, which is just what we want.

Now let’s look at the right side of our entry:

 cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

You can’t see it here, but there’s a space in front of “cyan” — the space that follows the pipe symbol. So we need to include that space in our search string, along with the word “cyan” (in the following examples, I use [space] to represent a space so you can see it; [space] should not actually be entered; use a real space created by pressing the space bar):

[space]cyan

There’s also a space after cyan, so we’ll need to include that as well.

[space]cyan[space]

That needs to be followed by a hyphen, a right angle bracket, and yet another space, like this:

[space]cyan[space]-\>[space]

But now you may be wondering why I put a backslash in front of the angle bracket. It’s because the angle bracket is itself a wildcard (a subject for another day), so we need to tell Word we’re using it as an actual character, which is what the backslash does.

Finally, the rest of our search string looks like this:

\1^013

This part of the string —

\1

— is the “Find What Expression” wildcard, which is what this article is about, and it certainly took us a long time to get to it!

Remember back when we grouped the very first part of our search string in parentheses?

([!^013]@)

That “group” is the “expression” that the \1 wildcard represents. In algebraic terms:

\1 = ([!^013]@)

And that means \1 will find whatever is found by the ([!^013]@) expression, which, my friend, is extremely cool, because it will allow us to weed out the duplicate entries on our reference list—entries like this:

Arch Intern Med. | cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

Now, for the first time, let’s look at our entire search string:

([!^013]@) | cyan \-\> \1^013

By now, you probably understand this quite well. The string finds any characters except a carriage return until it comes to a space and a pipe symbol; then it finds a space, the word “cyan,” and another space, followed by a hyphen, a right angle bracket, and a space. Finally (and most importantly), it finds whatever was found by the parenthetical group, followed by a carriage return.

Now we simply need to make sure that Word’s “Replace with” box is empty and click “Replace All.” All of those unnecessary entries will be deleted. (We’ll need to repeat with “green” for the entries that don’t include “cyan.”)

Which would you rather do: Find and delete such entries manually (with just 117,000 to look through) or have Word do it automatically?

That’s the power of the “Find What Expression” wildcard. In future articles, I’ll show you more uses for this wonderful tool, along with other Word wildcards.

Jack Lyon (editor@editorium.com) owns and operates the Editorium, which provides macros and information to help editors and publishers do mundane tasks quickly and efficiently. He is the author of Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals, Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word, and of Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word. Both books will help you learn more about macros and how to use them.

What Should an Editor Do?

In her comment to my article, Is the Editorial Freelancer’s Future a Solo Future?, Cassie Armstrong asked:

How does what you suggest differ from the idea of a large publishing house? I see the benefit of working with a group, but perhaps you can expand on the idea. Should I then offer my services to other freelancers and suggest collaboration?

The questions are important and boil down to “What should an editor do?”; the answers difficult.

I don’t see grouping together in the manner of a large publishing house as the answer. The idea is not to offer a full panoply of services — the cradle-to-grave approach — but rather to offer more competitively specialized and focused services.

Currently, large publishing houses (and smaller ones, too) contract with book packagers to provide nearly all of the needed production services. The result is that freelance editors no longer work directly for the publisher; rather, they deal with a third-party intermediary, the book packager. How does the packager get the business? It offers a package price for all the services and allocates a portion of the bid price to various services. Consequently, the editorial services take a beating because they are the least fixed-expense category, largely because this is out-housed work even for the packager.

So where does this leave the solo freelance editor? In a very uncompetitive position. Because we freelancers are always scampering to find the next job to fill a schedule gap, we tend to react to and subsequently forget about solicitations from third-party packagers such as this one I received (errors are as appear in the original):

We’re a leading company in pre-press industry and have huge amount of work for copyediting and cold-reading on regular basis. I’ve got your brief details from web and would like to see if you’re interested to associate with us. The major subject would be Science, Technology and Medicine for Books and Journals. We’re dealing with International clients only so they need very high standard of Quality and on time delivery so there will not be any compromise on these front.

The proposed rates are as under…

Copyediting – $0.80 per page

Cold-reading – $0.50 per page

There will be a Non-competent agreement between us before starting the live project.

These proposals are take-it-or-leave-it proposals because if you don’t want the work, someone else will jump at the chance, even though the rate of pay is absurdly low. What other option, other than turning down the offer, does the solo freelancer have? The publisher has contracted with the packager to provide these services and the packager has a gazillion “professional” freelance editors to solicit, many of whom would jump at this offer.

Solo freelancers may reject the above solicitation, but what about a solicitation that calls for “someone who is a subject matter expert in physiology with a strong science background to copy edit this book, as some sections may need to be rewritten.” In addition, “[m]any of contributors are not English speaker so will need copy edited pretty closely for language, especially for the chapters written by a non English speaker.” (The quotes are exact quotes, errors and all.) The job is for approximately 550 manuscript pages and has to be completed in less than 4 weeks. The proffered pay rate is $3.50 per page.

This second solicitation, although labeled as one for copyediting, is really a developmental editing job, a different type of edit altogether (see Editor, Editor, Everywhere an Editor for a discussion of developmental editing vs. copyediting). Again, because of the sheer numbers of competing solo freelancers, even if you would turn down this job, others would jump at it because they need the work.

The solo freelancer can’t bargain with the packager over the price for several reasons. Here are two: First, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of solo freelancers who would accept the job just to have a job, so you have no bargaining leverage. Second, the packager has already allocated money for the out-house editing and claims no wiggle room. (I once had a packager tell me that it not only had allocated the editorial budget but had also predetermined how much of that budget the packager had to retain because the packager’s editorial division had to show a profit!) Again, you are a solo freelancer in a sea of solo freelancers, and thus without bargaining power.

The idea of solo freelancers grouping together is to offer publishers an alternative, at least for editorial needs. As a group, the freelancers offer the same “advantages” that the packager does but put the group’s editorial skill level on the line. Sit back and think about what differentiates you as a solo freelancer from the packager who offers editorial services in the eyes of the publisher. It is in overcoming of those differences that grouping can offer.

Yet the solo freelancer needs to think carefully about the group concept. The idea is that the group needs to be fairly stable; you need to think and act long-term. You cannot assemble a group for one project then disband and form a different group for the next. There needs to be some permanence.

Perhaps more importantly, when forming a group, you cannot be stuck on the idea that every member of the group must do so many pages of editing every week. You need to approach the group from a more business-like perspective. Remember that the success or failure of the group is a combination of factors, not least of which is finding work for the group. Just like with law firms, the group’s “rainmaker” is as important as the person who actually does the editing work.

Cassie’s question was whether she should contact other solo freelancers and offer to collaborate. Although collaboration has been embraced by many (see, e.g., Ruth Thaler-Carter’s guest article,  Working Alone — Or Not?), collaboration is such a loose alliance that it won’t work over the long-term if the idea is to compete for work as a group.

Collaboration is designed for the individual project: A solo freelancer is offered a project that is too big for him/her to complete within the allotted time and so he/she needs project-specific help. The group, on the other hand, is designed to be ongoing and to solicit work based on there being a group of editors who can tackle a project on an as-needed basis and who are practiced at coordinating style amongst themselves.

The answer to Cassie’s question is not that collaboration is bad or should not be sought, but that it should not be the ultimate goal because it is not a method for obtaining work (which is the purpose of a group); collaboration is a method of completing work.

What should the editor do? What the editor thinks is best for the editor’s future.