Lost without my Find Key
So there I am, after a day of editing, busily editing some small part of my Mum’s next book. She has written many, all of which we will have to get published. And blow me down with a feather, if I don’t find the pages of one rather early draft, neglected for a time, scattered with strange Chinese characters, all of which help to further obscure the meaning of a rather, um, specialised text. What to do? Go through every page carefully deciphering each complex character to try and reconstruct the underlying meaning?
Visiting Mum later on, I remembered to mention this to her, and she said, “You only have to use ‘Find’ and ‘Replace’ twenty-six times” Each Chinese character substitutes for one letter of the western alphabet – of course! Sounds so obvious when I remember…
Or, almost asleep one evening, I suddenly realise that I have an abundance of one particular word – ‘that’, say – in a paragraph…which I can easily locate and thin down with other, more interesting words in our abundant English language lexicon. Find and Replace are such useful functions on my WP programme, and every day, when I am writing, as I casually edit them, I thank God for the clever person who thought about this and realised that reading through screeds of paper to find the one misplaced phrase is time better spent doing – almost – anything else.
I would be truly lost without the ‘Find’ and ‘Replace’ keys. It takes me time to navigate round new templates, and my fondness for this and a host of other useful functions, is one reason why I delay upgrading to a newer computer system. (That, and a rather old-fashioned loyalty to pieces of equipment that have not yet died on me.) I get used to things and am loath to change them.
Thanks for reading.
Please share:
January 17, 2018 @ 11:07 am
Oh I love Find and Replace as well. Cannot tell you how long it took for me to go through and change every word until one day curiosity got the better or me. Chinese characters (letters) are familiar in a way as I’ve worked with Chinese recording artists a lot and often have had to deal with it. Lovely piece. thanks x
January 17, 2018 @ 12:36 pm
Thank you so much, Jane! I write my blog posts and never know if they hit the spot, so thanks. I’m not sure what I would do without Find and Replace. They help me make my work more interesting – and now, when I read an author who never had that advantage, I occasionally have to stop myself counting how many ‘that’s there are in a paragraph. So easy to miss that kind of thing.
Have a lovely day. 🙂
January 17, 2018 @ 4:24 pm
I had no idea your Mom was such a prolific writer! And to have you as her editor must be a huge gift to her right now. I’m with you on Find and Replace! It was especially helpful when I was working as an administrator, having to file altogether too many reports and petitions, and couldn’t afford to have nasty slipups on name spellings, or grammar for that matter.
I have to be honest, though. When I first began using F&R, I didn’t trust it! 🙂 Imagine. Well, that was years ago. Thankfully we almost always grow the right way up! 🙂
January 17, 2018 @ 7:26 pm
Thanks, Elouise! Mum has 12 (more) books to publish, the first eight or so in reasonable order, six still to be edited, all to be formatted and then published. I have help with this, and feel organised at last, as long as I don’t think too hard about it, or linger too long in one place. When life is complex, get a system to help!
You are a great writer, and I imagine that you have made full use of F&R, though, as you say, it felt a bit weird using it the first few times, and occasionally, still, I forget that it is literal, and can produce strange hybrid words in a text. At least I know about this now, though. 🙂 xx