Wildcard strings for Academic Copyeditors/Regular Expressions

B.B. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:05:24 +0000

Here’s a list of basic regular expressions/MS Word wildcard search strings, useful for academic copyediting world (esp. to rip through a reference list). The logic of some of them is still a bit shaky – use with sensible precaution.

Replaces 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

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Wildcard strings for Academic Copyeditors/Regular Expressions