How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

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withoutFeathers
Posts: 140
Joined: 2013-03-19 16:22:50

How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by withoutFeathers »

Hi,
I've been puzzling over this one, reading in the power-find etc. , but can't figure it out.

It will be tricky to explain, here goes:

--I have about 3 thousand m-dashes in a 500 page book, and almost all have a character style that makes them Font X.
--The problem: a few times I forgot to add the character style. So there are a few dashes, here and there, that are original Font A, which is the same Font as the entire document (the whole body text).

Now: how can I easily select the handful of dashes with Font A, ie., where I forgot to apply Character Font X?

Tried:
--The logical thing would be 'Find' with 'attributes' checked -- but this doesn't work for the Font A dashes. I don't know why, perhaps it's a bug. Instead all of them get selected.
--I also tried the macro for selecting Font A, but that selects the whole document (except the Font X Characters), which is not what I need either.

So, to recap:
I need to select a specific character throughout my document, EXCEPT when that character has Character Style for "Font X" applied.

Suggestions?

Thanks
WF
jb
Posts: 92
Joined: 2007-11-09 15:27:25

Re: How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by jb »

Hi,
Do you want all m-dashes to have the same font/character style?
If so, can’t you simply find all m-dashes with Attribute Sensitive turned off—this will find all m-dashes—and then apply the font or character style?
withoutFeathers
Posts: 140
Joined: 2013-03-19 16:22:50

Re: How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by withoutFeathers »

jb wrote:Hi,
Do you want all m-dashes to have the same font/character style?
If so, can’t you simply find all m-dashes with Attribute Sensitive turned off—this will find all m-dashes—and then apply the font or character style?
Short form:
Aha! Silly of me.

Long form:
I didn't notice this probably because I'm working on another book at the same time, and in that one I have a complicated split of the m-dashes and font types, so it wouldn't have worked there...but I don't need it there. :roll:

And as I look through this book I see that even italic and copyright pages etc. -- all use the same different font for the m-dash. So you're right, should work fine. Thanks...

WF
Þorvarður
Posts: 410
Joined: 2012-12-19 05:02:52

Re: How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by Þorvarður »

Hi WF,

If your final intention is to assign all Em Dashes the same style attribute (Font X), then just select all Em Dashes in the document and assign them the same style attribute, and you're done.

>I need to select a specific character throughout my document, EXCEPT when that character has Character Style for "Font X" applied.

You don't need this, unless you want to do this as a sort of academic exercise. If yes, then this is how you can do it.

1. Select one of the Em Dashes with the character style Font X
2. Execute the menu command "Select All Style" from Format > Character Style > Select All Style OR click on the small Character Style icon and choose "Select All" at the bottom of the menu
1.png
1.png (10 KiB) Viewed 9198 times
3. Now execute the menu command "Invert Selection" (Edit > Select > Invert Selection)
4. Every character in the document is now selected EXCEPT the Em Dashes with the character style Font X
5. Change the search scope in the Find Box from "Entire File" to "In Selection".
6. Enter Em Dash as search term in the Find Box, and click Find All.
7. This will find all Em Dashes with Font A, while excluding Em Dashes with Font X
withoutFeathers
Posts: 140
Joined: 2013-03-19 16:22:50

Re: How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by withoutFeathers »

Þorvarður wrote:Hi WF,
3. Now execute the menu command "Invert Selection" (Edit > Select > Invert Selection)
Nice! Thanks.

And I'm doubly silly, because as I was working on this the thought crossed my mind briefly: "If there was an invert selection command like they have in graphics programs, I could do this." And assuming that there wasn't, I didn't even look for it. :oops:
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by adryan »

G’day, WF et al
WF wrote: The logical thing would be 'Find' with 'attributes' checked -- but this doesn't work for the Font A dashes. I don't know why, perhaps it's a bug.
I find this curious, too.

I tried using PowerFind Pro to find font-specific em dashes, but with no success at first. It does find font-specific words composed of usual alphabetic characters. Normal Find does find font-specific em dashes. When I subsequently tried PowerFind Pro again (after the Normal Find test), it did find font-specific em dashes.

I think there is a bug here.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
withoutFeathers
Posts: 140
Joined: 2013-03-19 16:22:50

Re: How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by withoutFeathers »

adryan wrote:G’day, WF et al
I tried using PowerFind Pro to find font-specific em dashes, but with no success at first. It does find font-specific words composed of usual alphabetic characters. Normal Find does find font-specific em dashes. When I subsequently tried PowerFind Pro again (after the Normal Find test), it did find font-specific em dashes.
Interesting, but I'm not sure what you mean by 'font-specific': do you mean you used a character style applied to m-dashes, specifying the font?

Or that it's just the base font for a Paragraph Style (like Normal), and it worked to find just those, by checking 'Attributes' in the Search?

This is what didn't work for me (the latter) because the result also flagged m-dashes that had another font applied as a Character Style, without differentiating the two types.

WF
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: How to find m-dash without specific Character Style?

Post by adryan »

G'day, WF et al

I didn’t use styles as such. I had a “Lorem ipsum” document in one font, into which I inserted a number of em dashes, some of which I changed to another font directly.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
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