Friday, July 11, 2025

A Cautionary Tale

Saw this just now in one of my author groups.  It's a cautionary tale...


If you use Find and Replace, do not do Replace All.  I did it once years ago to change a character's name.  I think it was Tom and I changed it to something like Bob, so tomorrow became boborrow and tomato became bobato.  Cusbobers? Botbob? Ugh.  It was frustrating and irritating, and kind of hilarious in retrospect.  

Last week, I saw a similar story - only this time it was a reader saying the book they were reading had all sorts of weird errors and after thinking about it for a time, they realized that the author had Replaced all instances of 'ass' with 'arse' (probably to make it more British sounding).  Working on an arseignment?  Going to an arseignation?  Went fishing and caught a big barse?

In the above case, though, I'm not sure what 'too late' would be for a book. Post publication and after a slew of bad reviews perhaps?  Ugh.

If you're silly enough to make this mistake, the fix isn't that hard.  Once you realize you've replaced all your Toms with Bobs, do another Find and Replace, finding Bob this time and going through each separate instance... OR just replace all Bobs with Toms again, and THEN do another search for Tom replacing it with what you meant to replace it with in the first place - each instance separately.  Which is what you should've done the first time, but you got lazy and paid the price.

Sometimes, doing the work the right way, no matter what kind of boring slog it is, actually saves time in the long run.

If you've done it and didn't do that final run-through before you loaded it for publication, only to have people read it and leave bad reviews, you're kinda screwed.  Always check, recheck, and double-check before you hit Publish.  

2 comments:

  1. The only time I do [replace all] if for double spaces and spaces at the beginning of a paragraph. And I do that at the very beginning just in case something goes screwy. I can find and fix when I go through it page by page. Everything else is a case by case affair. I have to admit, though, catching a barse or having an arseignation could be interesting. 🤣

    Have a great weekend!

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  2. I did a replace all once, and I swore my computer had glitched. Until I realized it was me who glitched. Now I check them one by one, unless it was for 'akjdfhi' as a place holder.

    I also save between almost every change, except for two spaces for one.

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