[bksvol-discuss] Fw: clearing out line breaks
- From: "Kellie Hartmann" <hart0421@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 14:47:53 -0500
Hi Monica,
Here is a message I wrote in the past explaining the method I developed for
getting rid of unwanted linebreaks while not removing the wanted ones. I'm
not sure what program you use for editing. This is written about using
Kurzweil, but the same can be done with Word.In fact, a friend of mine and I
developed a macro in Word that takes care of all this stuff in one fell
swoop. I'd be happy to share it, but I don't know how to find it so I can
copy it and share with others.
I've seen from a previous message that you're an advanced user of Word, so
if you decide to try this system you'll probably be able to apply it without
too much trouble. If not, feel free to ask any questions you have.
First, I recommend that you use Kurzweil for this kind of work, and not the
> BN. The BN's search and replace sometimes misses things for some
> unfathomable reason. The following is best done before you've gone through
> and read any or all of the book for correcting scanner errors; if you do
> these search/replace operations first and then go through the book you'll
be
> able to fix anything that slips through the cracks or gets altered
> unnecessarily. In Kurzweil you search for a hard linebreak by putting
> backslash n in the search/replace. So what I usually do is open the file
in
> k1k, and then examine it a little. First of all, check out the pattern of
> the words split by hyphens and linebreaks. Is there a space between the
> hyphen and the linebreak, or between the linebreak and the other half of
the
> word? Establish the pattern, and then replace that string. For example,
you
> may do your search for something like hyphen space linebreak or hyphen
> linebreak space depending on the pattern, then replace that string with
> nothing. That should clear up most of those without messing anything else
> up. Next is there anything that distinguishes the pattern of arbitrary
line
> breaks from those that denote paragraph boundaries? For example, I've seen
> cases where there were two spaces preceding line breaks that represented
new
> paragraphs and no spaces before the arbitrary ones. when this happens your
> clean-up is simple. In the above example I would do the following;
> 1. go into find and replace.
> 2. search for all line breaks preceded by two spaces.
> 3. replace them with a search string that you know for sure does not
appear
> in the book, such as an odd punctuation mark or combination thereof, such
as
> ^3. Now the file will look like a bit of a mess, but that will soon be
> fixed.
> 4. Replace all remaining line breaks with one space.
> 5. Now replace the search string you used to replace the desirable line
> breaks, in my example ^3, with line breaks again. Before you save these
> changes do some checking to be sure things have turned out as you expected
> with no unanticipated consequences. I would recommend doing a save-as and
> saving under a different filename, that way if something weird has
happened
> you can start over without too much difficulty.
>
> Now, if there is nothing to differentiate between the linebreaks you want
> and those you don't things get a little more complicated. What I do is a
> series of search-and-replace operations replacing combinations like period
> newline, quote newline, question mark newline, and exclamation point
newline
> with other search strings that don't appear in your file. For example, I
> would replace period newline with period ^3. Replace quote newline with
> quote ^3. Do the same with question mark and exclamation point. Once
you've
> done all that find all remaining linebreaks and replace them with one
space.
> Then go back and reverse all the earlier search/replaces and replace
period
> ^3 with period newline, etc.
>
> I know this sounds like an absolutely awful mess, and it is, but I've
found
> it does work and give very good results. It took me a while to get the
hang
> of this and I had to start over quite a few times, but the results have
been
> worthwhile in my opinion and it's way better than doing even a little of
> this by hand. You have to be careful and pay attention, and I don't blame
> anyone for not wanting to mess with this, but if you're interested in the
> book and the text quality is high your end product will be highly
> satisfactory.
> Hth, and if you have any questions feel free to ask me,
> Kellie
>
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