Regular expressions provide a language for searching and editing strings of characters. They can be invaluable for academic editing.
In MS Word, simple regular expressions are called “wildcards.” Used with care, these can save an editor time and keyboard strokes. You can enable them by Cntrl-F to bring up the Find/Replace dialogue box, clicking “More >>” [...]

Regular E

When track changes is enabled, MS Word transposes characters when using the wildcard string (a.k.a. regular expression):
Find \(([0-9]{4})\)
Replace with . \1.
The aim of the string is to transform, e.g. Hart, Keith (1973) to Hart, Keith. 1973.
But when track changes is on it produces Hart, Keith1973..
The only way to work around this that I [...]

Regular expressions, a.k.a wildcards, for use in find/replace functions. These strings allow you to speed up some mechanical editing tasks.