Macros? Highlight Weasel Words?

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’ve seen a lot of Word macros out there that let the writer color highlight weak words, telling words, etc.

I’m not a programmer, so learning how to write code or script isn’t for me. I could keep a list on my computer and do this manually, one by one, all 40+ words, but that’s painful. I could build a collection and have: so very just (etc.,) and change the search to Any Word. I could make that part of a novel template. But that syntax also returns the words son, every, justify. Plus, I’d need separate collections for phrases.

I could upgrade to Word 2016, sure. I’m on 2008 right now, which doesn’t allow for recording macros. But even if I upgrade, I’d have to export my manuscript out to Word, run the macros, fix the manuscript, then import the MS back into Scrivener. I keep all finished projects in Scriv.

Is there some add-on, some macro, something macro-ish that replicates what Word does without having to learn a programming skill?

Thank you SO much in advance!

2

Try Whole Word instead of Any Word. When I do that, and put “a the” in as search terms into the Interactive Tutorial project, it highlights “a” and “the”, but not the “a” in Research or Trash or the “the” in There or Then.

3

“Whole Word” will work when searching each word individually, but to make a collection of multiple “weasel words”, search using RegEx, with the syntax \b(word1|word2|word3|words in phrase)\b That will return every document that contains any of the listed words as a whole word (or the complete phrase).

You could restrict the search to the Draft only and probably want to limit to searching only in “Text”, unless you’re eliminating words from your document notes and synopses, too. :slight_smile: