The perils of Find and Replace.

The perils of Find and Replace. 😬

A writer told me about a time recently when he used Find and Replace on Word to change all references of ‘he’ and ‘she’ to ‘they’, and ‘his’ and ‘hers’ to ‘theirs’.

Unfortunately, he did a ‘replace all’ and did not have ‘whole words only’ selected so it messed up all sorts of other words.

✅ the –> tthey ❌

✅ sheet –> theyet ❌

Oops.

✅ historic –> theirstoric ❌

✅ others –> ottheirs ❌

Make sure you’ve expanded your menu when doing Find and Replace so that you can select ‘whole word only’.

I recommend replacing one at a time for the first few to make sure Word is picking up what you want it to. Then use ‘replace all’ only if you’re satisfied this will work accurately.