Word find about reading

There are so many important aspects to learning a second language; listening/comprehension, speaking, writing, and reading. If you are reading this blog regularly (and you should!) then you are already doing a good job of prioritizing reading English to help improve your overall language skills.

Today to recognize the importance of reading as part of language building, I have a post filled with English idioms, words, and phrases about reading and books. I have defined this new vocabulary below and included a practice exercise as well. I challenge you to use three of the words, phrases, or idioms here in the next week.

bookworm  – a person who loves to read and is devoted to reading
book smart – to be very smart or successful in scholastic way (from knowledge in books), but not very smart or successful in real world interactions
an open book – to have very evident and clear emotions and thoughts
to hit the books – to study hard
to read the fine print – to read carefully; to know all the information that is contained in a large document, such as a contact
to read between the lines – to try to understand something that is not expressed openly or explicitly; a synonym to this phrase is the verb ‘to infer’
 “Read my lips!” – This phrase means ‘listen very carefully.’ It is used to emphasize the importance of what a person is saying. This phrase was famously used by the George H. Bush when he was running for President of the United States in 1988. At that time he said, “Read my lips, no new taxes!”
to read someone the riot act – to give someone a strong scolding or to talk to someone severely; to yell at someone
spell bound – to hold someone’s attention completely; a synonym for this phrase is ‘fascinated’
“that’s one for the books” – This phrase is used to say that something is ‘amazing,’ ‘wonderful’ or ‘impressive.’
“you can’t judge a book by its cover” – This idioms is used to say, ‘you should not judge people by their appearance alone.’ This idiom also is used to remind people that the outside of something is not always the same as the inside.

Now let’s practice, fill in the sentences below with one of the idioms, words, or phrases defined above.  Also don’t’ forget to select which three you are going to use in conversation this week!

1.    I always have my lawyer read over my work contracts. I pay him to ________________ for me.
2.    Jane is very shy, she dresses conservatively, and she keeps to herself most of the time at school, but I saw her out at a club this past weekend and she was really partying. It just goes to show, ______________________.
3.    James has been a ____________________ since he was a young boy. He started reading at age 5 and has never been without a book since.
4.    ___________________, when I say you have to home by 10:00pm, I mean it! If you can’t follow the rules, you can’t go out with your friends anymore.
5.    It is time to ______________________ and get ready for our English final on Friday.
6.    I know Jill so well she is like _________________ to me; I know when she is happy, sad, or mad without her saying a word.

Answers:
1. read the fine print; 2. you can’t judge a book by its cover; 3.bookworm; 4. Read my lips; 5. hit the books; 6. an open book

Our latest collection of quotes about reading.

Reading has many incredible benefits and there are many reasons why we should develop a reading habit.

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Besides helping you acquire knowledge, reading keeps your brain active and engaged, helps reduce stress, and expands your vocabulary.

In addition, a reading culture will help you develop stronger analytical skills as well as improve your ability to focus and concentrate.

Overall, reading is a great way to develop and grow to a higher level.

Although many people understand the importance of reading, many still struggle to cultivate a better and consistent reading habit.

A practical way to approach it is to first determine your reading goals and have a deep willingness to read and grow in the process.

To help you create a habit of reading regularly, below are some great quotes about reading.

Enjoy!

Also, see these education quotes that will make you appreciate the power of learning and gaining knowledge.

If you like this article, we suggest you explore our most popular quotes article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. 

Check out more inspirational quotes on our motivational quotes category page.

Quotes about reading that will expand your mind

1. “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Richard Steele

2. “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” ― C.S. Lewis

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3. “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” –Mason Cooley

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4. “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” ― Oscar Wilde

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5. “Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.” ― George R.R. Martin

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6. “We read to know we’re not alone.” ― William Nicholson

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7. “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” — Victor Hugo

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8. “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” —Rene Descartes

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9. “She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.” ― Annie Dillard

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10. “Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.” ― Steven Spielberg

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Quotes about reading and how powerful it is

11. “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” —  Garrison Keillor

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12. “You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.” –Paul Sweeney

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13. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin

14. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” ― Ray Bradbury

15. “A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.” –Neil Gaiman

16. “I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” ― Orhan Pamuk

17. “Reading brings us unknown friends” ― Honoré de Balzac

18. “Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.” —Ben Okri

19. “Reading—the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.” —William Styron

20. “We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else’s mind.” —Anna Quindlen

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Quotes about reading to help develop the habit

21. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” —Dr. Seuss

22. “Reading is departure and arrival.” —Terri Guillemets

23. “I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to have grown up among books.” —Abraham Lincoln

24. “Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.” — Kate DiCamillo

25. “Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.” – Pam Allyn

26. “An hour spent reading is one stolen from paradise.” – Thomas Wharton

27. “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” — Mason Cooley

28. “Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.” – Alberto Manguel

29. “It’s one of the greatest gifts that reading can give a person: easy access to peace inside, even when the world outside is in shambles.” – J. W.

30. “If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” ― J.K. Rowling

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Reading quotes to remind us of its importance

31. “Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.” –John Green

32. “Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.” ― Paul Auster

33. “Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” ― Diane Duane

34. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” –Frederick Douglas

35. “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” — Emilie Buchwald

36. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” — Margaret Fuller

37. “I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.” ― Gary Paulsen

38. “Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape — I didn’t read to learn, I was reading to read.” ― Christian Bauman

39. “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” — Confucius

40. “I am a part of everything that I have read.” – Theodore Roosevelt

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Other thoughtful quotes about reading

41. “That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri

42. “No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don’t read is often as important as what you do read.” ― Lemony Snicket

43. “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” —Jorge Luis Borges

44. “A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.” —Louis L’Amour

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45. “One of the greatest gifts adults can give—to their offspring and to their society—is to read to children.” —Carl Sagan

46. “No two persons ever read the same book.” –Edmund Wilson

47. “I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.” – Woodrow Wilson

48. “Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai

49. “Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?” ― David Baldacci

50. “Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.” – Mark Haddon

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More reading quotes and sayings

51. “Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” – Lemony Snicket

52. “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” – John Green

53. “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde

54. “Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.” – John Green

55. “A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” – William Styron

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56. “We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.” – Judith Butler

57. “Generally speaking, books don’t cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.” – Pseudonymous Bosch

58. “What is inside books may not all that necessarily be different from what are outside books at all.” – Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

59. “There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don’t really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.” – Matt Haig

60. “Read about things that wouldn’t keep you up all night long, weeping and tearing out your hair.” – Lemony Snicket

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Quotes about reading for people that refuse to pick up a book

61. “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
— Mark Twain

62. “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” – Mortimer Adler

63. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
— Haruki Murakami

64. “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
— Albert Einstein

65. “Reading without thinking will confuse you.Thinking without reading will place you in danger.” – Confucius

66. “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
— J.D. Salinger

67. “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.” – Charles William Eliot

68. “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” – Groucho Marx

69. “The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.” – David Bailey

70. “He that loves reading has everything within his reach.” – William Godwin

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Quotes about reading that will make you want to own a library

71. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx

72. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” – Jane Austen

73. “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” – Maya Angelou

74. “I never feel lonely if I’ve got a book – they’re like old friends. Even if you’re not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life.” – Emilia Fox

75. “When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they’re feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.” – Amy Tan

76. “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island…” – Walt Disney

77. “Reading… a vacation for the mind.” – Dave Barry

78. “A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.” – Martin Farquhar Tupper

79. “Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.” – Franz Kafka

80. “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

Quotes About Reading That Will Make You Grab A Book

81. “Reading is a gift. It’s something you can do almost anytime and anywhere. It can be a tremendous way to learn, relax, and even escape.” ― Richard Carlson

82. “The problem with a life spent reading is you know too much.” ― Josh Lanyon

83. “When you lose yourself in a book the hours grow wings and fly.” ― Chloe Thurlow

84. “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” ― Harry Truman

85. “The world belongs to those who read.” ― Rick Holland

86. “I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else’s story, the delicious ache of the last page.” ― Naomi Shihab Nye

87. “I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.” ― Elbert Hubbard

88. “I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough… the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.” ― John Adams

89. “This week I’ve been reading a lot and doing little work. That’s the way things ought to be. That’s surely the road to success.” ― Anne Frank

90. “I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” ― Emma Thompson

Quotes About Reading for The Magical Words

91. “We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.” ― Quintilian

92. “Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.” ― Thornton Wilder

93. “What is reading but silent conversation?” ― Walter Savage Landor

94. “The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.” ― Mary McLeod Bethune

95. “I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.” ― Bill Gates

96. “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.” ― Francis Bacon

97. “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” ― Logan Pearsall Smith

98. “All readers are good readers, when they have the right book.” ― Jeanne Herry

99. “Elegance isn’t solely defined by what you wear. It’s how you carry yourself, how you speak, what you read.” ― Carolina Herrera

100. “A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.” ― Erica Jong

Which are your favorite reading quotes

Reading books has many benefits.

When you develop a reading habit, it helps you learn more about your field, makes you think deeper, helps you sharpen your skills and much more.

No matter what your field or interests might be, it’s important to develop a reading culture.

Hopefully, these quotes have motivated you to remain focused on your reading goals.

Did you enjoy these quotes about reading?

Which of the reading quotes was your favorite?

Tell us in the comment section below.

Also, feel free to share with your friends and followers.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R.R. Martin

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” — Harper Lee

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” — Lemony Snicket

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” — C.S. Lewis

“Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx

“‘Classic’ – a book which people praise and don’t read.” — Mark Twain

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” — Ray Bradbury

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.” — Roald Dahl

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” — Fran Lebowitz

“Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.” — Lena Dunham

“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” — Jhumpa Lahiri

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” — Descartes

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” — Mortimer J. Adler

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” — Diane Duane

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss

“Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” — Malorie Blackman

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” — Orhan Pamuk

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” — Logan Pearsall Smith

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” — Margaret Fuller

“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.” — Saul Bellow

“A good book is an event in my life.” — Stendhal

“Reading brings us unknown friends” — Honoré de Balzac

“The world was hers for the reading.” — Betty Smith

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” — Louis L’Amour

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” — Fernando Pessoa

“No. I can survive well enough on my own—if given the proper reading material.” — Sarah J. Maas

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” — Walt Disney

“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.” — Jules Verne

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” — Cicero

“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” — Malcolm X

“It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.” — Maureen Corrigan

“Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.” — Arnold Lobel

“There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat.” — E. Nesbit

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” — Carl Sagan

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.” — Roald Dahl

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” — Ezra Pound

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” — P.J. O’Rourke

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.” — Jane Smiley

“Beware of the person of one book.” — Thomas Aquinas

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” — Abraham Lincoln

“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” — C.S. Lewis

“You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.” — Paul Sweeney

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” — Frederick Douglas

“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.” — Austin Phelps

““You may have tangible wealth untold. Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be — I had a mother who read to me.” — Strickland Gillilan

“The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.” — Mark Twain

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” — Victor Hugo

“Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!” — Betty Smith

“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” — Garrison Keillor

“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.” — Dr. Seuss

“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” — Napoléon Bonaparte

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” — Italo Calvino

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges

“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” — Mary Schmich

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” — Mary Wortley Montagu

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” — Emma Thompson

“If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.” — Roald Dahl

“That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.” — Aphra Behn

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” — W. Somerset Maugham

“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.” — Bill Watterson

“These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” — Roald Dahl

“I guess there are never enough books.” — John Steinbeck

“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.” — Voltaire

“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” — J.K. Rowling

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” — Anne Herbert

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” — Emilie Buchwald

“I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.” — H.P. Lovecraft

“Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.” — E.B. White

“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.” — David Levithan

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx

“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” — Albert Einstein

“I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die.” — Patrick Rothfuss

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson

“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.” — Edgar Allan Poe

“Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.” — Henry Ward Beecher

“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” — Woody Allen

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” — Joseph Brodsky

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” — Maya Angelou

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” — Jane Austen

“Books break the shackles of time – proof that humans can work magic.” — Carl Sagan

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” — Socrates

“For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.” — Audrey Hepburn

“Reading for me, is spending time with a friend.” — Gary Paulsen

“[F]rom the reading of ‘good books’ there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.” — Gordon B. Hinckley

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.” — Voltaire

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” — Mortimer J. Adler

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” — C.S. Lewis

“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.” — Arthur Conan Doyle

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” — Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright.” — Gustave Flaubert

“I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.” — Wisława Szymborska

“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” — Holbrook Jackson

“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild to pick up a book and read to a child.” — Anita Merina

“Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.” — David Quammen

“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or a duty. It should be offered as a gift.” — Kate DiCamillo

Let’s delve even deeper into the ‘Find’ function, looking specifically at a number of options that can be accessed in the Word “Find” feature (CTRL+F) by clicking its “More” button.

In a recent issue of Office for Mere Mortals we looked at how to search within a Word document. There is a lot of hidden power accompanying the relatively simple process of finding text within a document.

Advanced Find

The clever Find features are in Advanced Find. Press Ctrl + F to open the Word navigation pane, click on the pull-down menu then Advanced Find …

It’s called Advanced Find but many long-time Word users will know it as the standard Find dialog that’s been in Word for many, many years.

Click on the More … button to see a lot of power in Word’s Find.

FIND WHOLE WORDS ONLY

‘Find whole words only’ is a selectable option in Word that can be accessed in the Find feature (Ctrl-F) by clicking the ‘More’ button to display more specific search features.

But what does it mean to find whole words only? Isn’t that what a normal search is meant to do? Well… yes and no. A ‘whole word’ is defined in Office as a group of characters surrounded on either side by one or more spaces or punctuation marks.

To demonstrate the difference between having the ‘Find whole words only’ option selected and not having it selected, I will use a very simple example. Feel free to try it for yourself in Microsoft Word.

Let’s pretend that you are searching for the word ‘ample’ out of the following short text: “This sample sentence is one way to demonstrate the ample finding flexibility of Office”.

There is only one instance of the word ‘ample’ within the text, searching without the ‘Find whole words only’ option would actually find 2 matches. The less obvious match comes as part of the tail-end of the second word of the text, which is ‘sample’.

To further demonstrate my point, the word ‘in’ does not appear within the sample sentence on its own using ‘Find whole words’, but would be found twice within the word “finding” with that choice off.

By selecting the ‘Find whole words only’ option, Office will omit matches to any search query that is found _within_ a word of the document. Such a search is less intensive for the program and will therefore be faster with large amounts of text.

Before you go setting this option, be forewarned that it will omit any plurals from your search results. Searching for the word ‘sport’ in the following text will not produce any matches: “Why are all the sports I want to watch on at the same time?”

USE WILDCARDS

A wildcard is a special character that you can use to represent one or more characters in a search string. Any character or set of characters can be represented by a wildcard character. It is really just another name for a “regular expression”.

With just a few special characters and the knowledge of what they represent, searching for strings that conform to a predefined grammar (or pattern) now becomes extremely easy.

The first step to using wildcards in your search terms is to select the ‘Use Wildcards’ option, which can be found in find dialog box after clicking the ‘More’ button. The ‘Match case’ and ‘Find whole words only’ check boxes are now unavailable (grayed out).

There are two ways to incorporate wildcards into your search query string. The first is to choose the particular wildcard character from a list. To do this, click the ‘Special’ pull-down menu and select the desired wildcard character from the resulting list. Then type any additional text into the ‘Find what’ box. The second way is to simply type in the wildcard character directly into the ‘Find what’ box!

The asterisk (*) is the most commonly used wildcard to search for a string of one or more characters. For example, just say you want to find all words that start with “a” and end with “m”. Then you could write “a*m” as your search term. Your results could be anything from “aim” to “antidisestablishmentarianism”.

The next most commonly used wildcard is the question mark (?), which can be used to substitute for any single character. For example, sat?n finds “satin” and “satan”.

SOUNDS LIKE… FO-NE-TIKS

The ‘Sounds like’ option is a type of search mechanism for words that may have been spelt phonetically. To make this point, searching for the word ‘phonetically’ with the ‘Sounds like’ option switched on, will find all of the words that would sound like the word ‘phonetically’ if you were to say them out aloud. As a test, I wrote down ‘fonetikalee’ in a document and searched for the word ‘phonetically’ with the ‘Sounds like’ option activated. The find feature was indeed able to determine that I was searching for the word ‘fonetikalee’.

This function may be of use for people who type up conversations between people in real-time. If someone uses a word you are not familiar with in such a situation, you don’t really have the time find out how to spell it properly. In such a situation, the common solution would be to simply type it phonetically (as it sounds) and then move on. Sometime after scribing the conversation, you may have a flash of enlightenment and realize what word the person actually said.

Instead of scrolling through pages of text to find it and change the potentially numerous incarnations of phonetic spelling, you can simply type in the correct word to the search facility with the ‘Sounds like’ option selected, and hope that your phonetic spelling was sufficient for the ‘Sounds like’ search algorithms to pick up.

FIND ALL WORD FORMS – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSE

The ‘Find all word forms’ option has a simple, but powerful function. It acts by finding all possible tenses of the search word.

For example, if I searched for “run”, then both “run” and “ran” could be potential search results.

Similarly, searching for “talk” could have both “talk” and “talked” as potential search results.

Searching for “laugh” on the other hand, could have “laugh”, “laughed” and “laughing” as potential search results.

READER QUESTION: HOW DO YOU FIND A SPACE?

A question from an OfMM reader recently queried us how to find a space within a document. This is quite simply a case of typing a space into the ‘Find what’ text box and clicking the ‘Find Next’ button. This will find each and every space from the start to the end of the document. A useful application of this would be to insert two spaces in the “Find what” box in order to any occurrences of two consecutive spaces within a document, in order to ensure consistency of spacing between sentences.

Another way of doing this was mentioned in passing in the last OfMM newsletter in the section entitled “Strange Characters”. Selecting the ‘Special’ pull-down list in the Find dialog box will bring up a list of special search character types. The last option on this list is called ‘White-space’ and as the name suggests, can be used to find groups of white space within the search area. This is equivalent to typing /w into the ‘Find what’ text box.

THE ‘GO TO’ TAB

Another way of quickly accessing a certain area of a document, or even jumping through a document in regular increments, is to use the ‘Go To’ tab on the Find dialog box.

On this tab you can select between a number of document elements including: page, section, line, bookmark, comment, footnote, endnote, field, table, graphic, equation, object, and heading.

Then simply jump through the document For example, if the page option has been selected, you can type in the page you wish to ‘Go To’ in the ‘Enter page number’ text box. Then click the ‘Next’ button and you will be taken there.

An interesting function is to go to the heading in the document. If you have headings few and far between, then this is a useful tool. You have to make sure that your headings are formatted as a “Heading” within word, and aren’t simply bolded or formatted “Normal” text.