There are many ways to exploit Word's Find and Replace function. One of the more interesting procedures is the checking of document formatting, that is, searching not for specific text characters, but for text attributes, such as the roman ("regular" in Word), italic or bold italic font formats, or attribute groupings such as Arial 11 point bold italic text.

Searching for and checking the accuracy of font formatting is something a document editor does as part of final document work. More often than not that involves using just the "find" facility, not the "replace" facility. What one is really doing is performing part of the proofreading process before the hard copy proofreading task is commenced. It is well worth the time.

Inadvertently italicised text is probably the most common font formatting error in word processing, so let's go through the steps of specifying the search criterion of italic formatting for a document and see what turns up:

In Figure 2, the text (susuki has been highlighted in a further search. You can easily tell that an error exists. The opening parenthesis is highlighted, the closing parenthesis is not (this can only be an error).

The fact that the Find function highlights text (the technical term is "reverse video"; white text on a black background instead of black text on a white background) is a real advantage, because formatting errors are visually emphasised.

Figure 3 shows the results of another search for italic text in the document. This time there is no error within the highlighted text, but the fact that the entire text block is not highlighted seems strange. If an entire paragraph or sentence is italicised, it should all be selected. So the suspicion is that the comma following the word Science is not italic. This is the case. The comma is set as roman (confirmed by clicking into the document text-clicking outside the Find and Replace box-and manually selecting the comma with the mouse and looking at the Italic button on the Formatting toolbar). Incorrectly formatted punctuation within blocks of italicised text is another common formatting error in word processing.

Figure 4 shows another typical formatting error. This is where a comma immediately following italicised text has been mistakenly italicised. The book title Point and Counterpoint etc. should be italicised, but the "trailing" comma should not. A mistake easily made when selecting text with the mouse. This is the type of error that has entered into text publishing via word processing.

This type of proofing is fast and easy to perform, and is a useful adjunct to spelling and grammar checks, which do not pick up these types of errors. The last example, the mistakenly italicised comma (or semi-colon), is one of the most difficult types of errors to identify in hard copy proofreading, yet is easily seen in this type of text search. If you pick up three or four errors in a document, it is worthwhile. In fact it is worth it even when no errors are picked up, as you have still successfully proofed a portion of the document.

You use the Find and Replace box No Formatting button to remove formats specified with the Find what: and Replace with: features. This button is greyed out (unavailable for use) unless text formats are operative. Even experienced users can get confused when they search for a format, close the Find and Replace box, then open it and search for specific text they know exists, only to get a null search result. The null result is caused by the maintenance of the previously defined format (for example, bold), when the text being searched for does not meet that criterion (because, for example, it is set as italic). Format/s specified for a previous search are not removed unless you click the No Formatting button or close Word.