Removing a repeated pattern of text in Word

Question

I'm editing a text which has a repeated part of a gloss which I want to remove. The format is

nominative singular masculine of past participle of √prach, pr̥cháti ‘ask, ask for’ – invoked. Compare the Latin deponent verb precor ‘ask for, supplicate’.

I want to remove all the sections with the form

– invoked

So this passage will then read:

nominative singular masculine of past participle of √prach, pr̥cháti ‘ask, ask for’. Compare the Latin deponent verb precor ‘ask for, supplicate’.

Sometimes these parts of the gloss are followed by a full stop and further text, as here, and sometimes only by a carriage return. Is this possible?

Answer 1

This can be achieved using the "Find and Replace" option in MS Word. However, I was getting stuck somewhere and was not able to produce the desired result. Now, since I have cracked the code, can't wait to share:

You have a document which has a repeated part of a gloss (in this format - invoke) and you want to remove it. I have made one document similar to yours:

You notice that hyphen? It's not a general hyphen, it's called En Dash in MS Word and is put into place by Word AutoFormat in documents.

To proceed with the solution, let's replace all those En Dashes at first with hash #.

Press Ctrl+H, in Find what: put ^=

In Replace with: put # and click Replace all. Your document will turn into something like this:

Now, press Ctrl+H once again. Put these at appropriate places:

Find what: #(*{1,})[!0-9A-z]

Replace with: .[space] (here [space] refers to one stroke at the space bar).

Check Use wildcards. If done everything right, you will get something like this:

Now, click Replace All.

That's it, you will replace every text that is in the format - invoke. See this:

You may notice some extra spaces as highlighted above. To remove those spaces, simply go to Ctrl+H, in Find what: put [space].[space] and in Replace with: put .

So, now you've done it, you will get this:

(no extra spaces before fullstop)

Have a good day. I hope this helps. Do tell how it does :)