Our last newsletter explained how to search for special characters (such as carriage returns and section breaks) using character codes. You can read the newsletter here:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?sort=d&mid=1703875043
Why should you, as an editor, writer, or publisher, care about something as "technical" as searching with codes? Because they make it possible to find and replace things you ordinarily couldn't, such as paragraph breaks, dashes, and symbols. This can be a big help in cleaning up all kinds of editorial and typographical problems that you'd otherwise have to fix by hand.
After reading the last newsletter, subscriber Bruce White wrote: "Next obvious question: Where can we find a full list of codes?"
There are actually two different kinds of codes:
1. Microsoft Word's built-in codes (such as ^p for paragraph breaks and ^t for tabs).
2. ANSI character codes (such as ^013 for paragraph breaks and ^009 for tabs).
Both kinds of codes are useful, but the list of ANSI codes includes every character you can use in Microsoft Word. Next week I'll provide a list of these codes and explain how to use them.
This week, I'll give you a list of Word's built-in codes, which you can use in Microsoft Word's Find and Replace dialog (Edit/Replace). For example, if you wanted to find an em dash, you'd enter the following code in the "Find what" box:
^+
To replace it with an en dash, you'd enter this in the "Replace with" box:
^=
You can also insert Word's built-in codes by clicking the Special button in the Find and Replace dialog and then selecting the item you need. Please note that you can use some of the codes only in finding text, others only in replacing, and others in either one.
You can also use combinations of codes. For example, you could search for tabs followed by paragraph breaks (^t^p) and replace them with paragraph breaks alone (^p).
And now, here's the list. Enjoy!
CODES YOU CAN USE IN THE "FIND WHAT" BOX
Annotation mark ^a
Any character ^?
Any digit ^#
Any letter ^$
Caret character ^^
Column break ^n
Em dash ^+
En dash ^=
Endnote mark ^e
Field ^d
Footnote mark ^f
Graphic ^g
Line break ^l
Manual page break ^m
Nonbreaking hyphen ^~
Nonbreaking space ^s
Optional hyphen ^-
Paragraph mark ^p
Section break ^b
Tab character ^t
White space ^w
CODES YOU CAN USE IN THE "REPLACE WITH" BOX
Caret character ^^
Clipboard contents ^c
Column break ^n
Contents of the Find What box ^&
Em dash ^+
En dash ^=
Line break ^l
Manual page break ^m
Nonbreaking hyphen ^~
Nonbreaking space ^s
Optional hyphen ^-
Paragraph mark ^p
Tab character ^t
