I discovered, the other day, that Word has a nifty feature that might prove invaluable.

Find and replace.

Yes, I knew about the normal operation of “find and replace”, but I didn’t know you could use this feature to turn all words in italic to underlined instead. This would literally save hours and hours of work if a publisher’s submission guidelines insisted on this.

Another thing it can do is search and replace spaces. If you are like me and were taught to type with two spaces between sentences, but submission guidelines say it has to be one space, then this feature will become your new best friend. Guaranteed!

This is how you do it (curtesy of David Meadows, a member of my message board):

Select Replace from the Edit Menu (or Ctrl-H)

Click the “More” Button.

Click “Format” and select “Font” from the drop-down.

Select “Italic” and click OK. If you’ve done it right, it will say “Format: Font: Italic” under the “Find what” box (the box itself should be blank, as you don;t want it to find any specific text.)

Click in the “Replace with” box.

Click “Format” and select “Font” from the drop-down.

Select “Underline” and click OK.

Click “Find Next” or “Replace” or, if you’re confident, “Replace All”.

Filed under: Did you know?, Grammar and Punctuation, Writing: