Dealing with Run-On Sentences

Mia often edits documents containing run-on sentences. Invariably these are two sentences that are currently joined by a comma. Mia wants to replace the comma with a period and then capitalize the first letter of the next word. Doing this manually gets repetitive and time-consuming, so she would like to create a macro and a keyboard shortcut to handle the process.

You could actually record a macro to handle this type of edit. Put your insertion point to the left of the comma and start the macro recorder. You can then perform these steps:

1. Hold down the Shift key as you press the Right Arrow key to select the comma.
2. Press a period. This replaces the comma with the requisite period.
3. Press the Right Arrow once. This should move past the space and put the insertion point just to the left of the character you want to capitalize.
4. Hold down the Shift key as you press the Right Arrow key to select the character.
5. Using the mouse, select Format | Change Case | Uppercase | OK. If you are using Word 2007, display the Home tab of the ruler and click Change Case in the Font group.

You can now stop the macro recorder. The macro could be assigned to a shortcut key, or to a button on the toolbar (or, in Word 2007, to the Quick Access toolbar). If you examine the macro, you will find that it looks similar to the following:

Sub FixRunOn()
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, _
      Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
    Selection.TypeText Text:="."
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, _
      Count:=1
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, _
      Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
    Selection.Range.Case = wdUpperCase
End Sub