If you change your character's name from Rob to Joe, and you don't set it up correctly, you could end up with odd words in your manuscript, like “PJoeably”, “Joe a bank”, and “thJoe”. Of course, Scrivener's Project Replace feature has a couple of important options to ensure that you only replace the desired instances of a word within your MS.

To access the Project Replace feature, click the Edit menu, select Find, choose Project Replace…

Ignore Case: Will replace all matches, regardless of capitalization. Not recommended when replacing names or acronyms. NOTE: Ignore Case only applies to the Replace box, not the With box. If you type “Joe” in the With box, it will replace both “Rob” and “rob” with “Joe”.

Whole words only: This will avoid the “pjoelem” discussed earlier. If this is checked, Scrivener will only mark “Rob” or “rob” (depending on your case choices) for replacement. Great for replacing “pin” with “needle” without changing “hoping” to “honeedleg”. 😉 Bad for proper nouns where you may have possessive or contracted forms (e.g. Rob's, Rob'll).

Both unchecked: All instances of the letters matching the case you've used in the Replace box will be marked for replacement, regardless of their appearance within another word. In the picture example above, “Rob”, “Rob's”, “Robbing” will be affected, but not “rob”, “probe”, or “ROB”.

Both checked: The exact word entered in the Replace box will be marked for replacement, regardless of case. In the picture example above, “Rob”, “rob”, and “ROB” will be affected, but not “Rob's”, “robber”, or “probably”.

Scope: Check the documents you'd like to be affected by the replace action.

The easiest way to understand Project Replace is to play around with it yourself. If you're nervous about what Scrivener will replace, you might first use the Project Search feature (covered in last week's post) to see what it returns for a match. Or you can double-check the results using Project Search after you perform the Replace.

Need more help? Sign up for an online class, read more Scrivener articles, or schedule a private training session. If you don't already have it, you can download Scrivener here.

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