What Are Wildcards in Microsoft Word (and Why Editors Underuse Them)?
If you spend your days editing in Microsoft Word, you’re probably fluent in Track Changes, styles, and Find and Replace.
But there’s a feature hiding in plain sight that even experienced editors often overlook, and that is wildcards.
Wildcards transform Find and Replace from a simple search tool into something far more powerful: a way to identify and manipulate patterns across your entire document. For professional editors and writers, that shift can mean the difference between hours of repetitive corrections and a few well-executed searches.
Yet, as PerfectIt’s latest ebook, Brave New Word puts it, wildcards remain “one of the most powerful and underused tools in the editor’s toolkit.”
What are wildcards in Microsoft Word?
Wildcards allow you to search for patterns of text instead of exact matches.
In standard Find and Replace, you might search for a specific word. But with wildcards, you can search for structures:
Words that follow a spelling pattern
Inconsistent presentation of numbers and symbols
Repeated characters or spacing issues
Complex phrases with multiple possible errors
Technically, wildcards are symbols used within a search string to represent variable text. As Brave New Word explains, they are “symbols in a search string that represent zero, one, or more than one unspecified character.”
To use them in Microsoft Word:
Press Ctrl + H to open Find and Replace
Click More
Tick Use wildcards
Microsoft’s own documentation, “Find and replace text in Word” and “Using Wildcard characters in searches”, is helpful if you want the official syntax and behaviour.
Why wildcards matter for professional editors
Brave New Word makes a key point that many editors instinctively recognize.
If you’ve ever wished you could search for a pattern rather than a word or phrase, this book is for you.
And that is exactly the distinction.
Editing is rarely about fixing one word. It’s about spotting patterns of inconsistency, including:
Variations in spelling
Inconsistent punctuation or spacing
Formatting drift across long documents
Repeated structural issues introduced by multiple authors
Wildcards let you tackle those problems systematically, not manually.
The real power: one search, many fixes
The example below is a strong representation of how powerful one search can be.
Take a phrase like:
Dessert Locust Controlled Organization of East Africa
There are multiple possible errors here including spelling, wording, and style inconsistencies. In a real document, those errors might appear in different combinations.
A traditional approach would require multiple searches.
A wildcard approach can fix all combinations at once – described as “31 corrections for the price of one” in the ebook.
That is the crux of wildcard editing: solving variability with a well-designed pattern.
Practical wildcard techniques editors actually use
Brave New Word is packed with real-world ways to use wildcards. Here are a few that show you how wildcards translate into everyday editorial work.
Fixing spacing issues in one pass
Instead of repeatedly replacing double spaces, then triple spaces, and so on, you can use:
[ ]{2,}
This finds two or more spaces in one go, which you can replace with a single space.
This is a perfect example of replacing a pattern, not an instance, and it’s far more efficient than manually searching for incorrect spacing. Your eyes will definitely thank you for this one!
Removing editorial comments or placeholders
Documents often contain notes like:
[ADD REFERENCE]
A wildcard string such as:
\[[A-Z ]@\]
can remove all such notes in one swoop (or click) no matter their length.
This is particularly useful when cleaning up drafts before publication.
Standardizing inconsistent spelling
Wildcards can handle multiple variations at once. For example:
ac{1,2}om{1,2}odation
This finds common misspellings of accommodation, whether the author used one or two C’s, or M’s and replaces them correctly.
Interestingly, it also finds the correct spelling and replaces it with itself, which is pointless, yet useful in the grand scheme of this wildcard.
Reordering and restructuring text
Using grouping and back-references, wildcards can:
Swap date formats (UK to US)
Remove punctuation selectively
Reformat structured text like references
This moves beyond correction into text transformation, which is a level of control that, again, many editors never fully exploit.
Why editors still underuse wildcards
Given how incredibly useful wildcards are, why aren’t they used more widely?
Brave New Word addresses this directly.
“I think the simple answer is that they can be a little bit intimidating. Wildcards can just seem that little bit too “mathsy” or “techy”, especially to people who bathe exclusively in the sacred waters of language and writing.”
In practice, there are four main barriers:
Perceived complexity - The syntax looks unfamiliar at first glance.
Hidden feature - Wildcard functionality isn’t obvious in Word’s interface.
Trial and error - Building effective search strings takes experimentation.
Risk aversion - Editors are understandably cautious about bulk changes.
These barriers are largely psychological. Editors who already understand patterns in language are actually ideally suited to using wildcards.
A shift in mindset: from words to patterns
One of the most valuable ideas you’ll read in Brave New Word is this:
Language is full of patterns, and at its core, editing is about recognizing and implementing them.
Wildcards are one of Microsoft Word’s most powerful, and most underused, features.
They allow professional editors to:
Replace repetitive manual work with pattern-based solutions
Apply editorial decisions consistently
Handle complex, messy documents with confidence
Simply put, wildcards give you a way to act on that insight. Instead of fixing issues one by one, you move to defining rules and applying them across the document. That mindset shift makes wildcards transformative.
And once you start using them, it’s hard to go back. And why would you want to?
Where wildcards fit alongside PerfectIt
Wildcards are powerful, but they require you to define patterns manually.
PerfectIt builds on the same principle but automates it. Instead of writing wildcard strings, you run checks based on editorial rules.
Brave New Word shows how wildcard thinking extends into PerfectIt’s Wildcard Find & Replace check, allowing you to:
Apply contextual rules
Combine wildcard logic with style enforcement
Scale consistency across entire documents
In practice, many editors use wildcards for flexible, custom fixes, and PerfectIt for systematic, repeatable checks.
Turn wildcard theory into real editorial results
Understanding wildcard theory is one thing. Using them effectively in real editorial work is another.
Brave New Word is designed to bridge the gap. It will take you from fundamentals of wildcard syntax to real-world examples you can use in your own editing.
Inside, you’ll find:
Clear explanations of every wildcard symbol and how they work
Worked examples across legal, medical, technical, and academic writing
Practical search strings for common editing challenges
Guidance on troubleshooting and avoiding common wildcard pitfalls
Advanced techniques, including using wildcards with PerfectIt
Whether you’re standardizing spelling, fixing consistency issues, or handling complex variations in one pass, this guide shows you how to apply wildcards with confidence.