Consuetudium lectorum Mirum est notare. Eodem modo typi qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari fiant sollemnes in futurum? Assum Typi non habent claritatem insitam est usus legentis in iis. Claritatem Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius Claritas est etiam. Nam liber tempor cum soluta. Est etiam processus dynamicus qui.

only to have it end up looking like this?

Consuetudium lectorum Mirum est notare.
Eodem modo typi qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari fiant sollemnes in futurum? Assum Typi non habent claritatem insitam est usus
legentis in iis.
Claritatem Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius Claritas est etiam. Nam liber tempor cum soluta. Est etiam
processus dynamicus qui.

Most word processors have a command that lets you see invisible markers like spaces (usually represented as a faint dot “•”) and what are still quaintly called “carriage returns,” or “line feeds” (generally shown by the symbols ”¶” or “↵”).¹ If you turn that feature on, you will see that there are way too many such return symbols in the above text. It might seem like the solution would be to find and replace all those returns with spaces, but then you would have no paragraphs at all in your document. What you want to do is replace all the mid-paragraph returns, but leave those between paragraphs.

Using Regular Expressions (RegEx), as discussed in the last post in this series, what we would want to do is search for every return (or line feed) that is not followed or preceded by a return (or line feed). In addition–since some paragraphs are separated not by a blank line but by a tab or sequence of spaces at the start of the new paragraph–we want to look for those as well. I find the following search works pretty well for me: (?<=[^\r\n\t ][^\r\n])\R(?=[^\r\n][^\r\n\t ])  It is easy to find many patterns like this in online forums, as I did, saving you the trouble of having to re-invent the wheel.

If you prefer not to have to muddle around with code, there are a number of tools out there which can automate this kind of text cleanup for you. On macOS my favorite is the package of free WordService menu extensions from DEVONtechnologies. These are extensions that work with the built-in “Services” menu that pops up on macOS whenever you control-click on some selected text. The package offers a number of useful commands to do things like change the capitalization of the selected text (e.g. turn “THE APPLE” into “The Apple,” or “The apple,” etc.), reformat line breaks (or remove them altogether), and one that can give you useful statistics such as the word or character count of the selected text, etc.

Considering that WordService is free and does pretty much the same thing, you might not want to spend $45 for TextSoap, but if you already have a subscription to the Setapp bundle of macOS apps then TextSoap is included with your subscription. Another option is Textwell which works on both macOS and iOS and can do much more than just clean text. It has some built in tools, much like those offered in WordService, but (if you aren’t afraid of tweaking the JavaScript in the example code) you also can make your own actions. I really like that these can be synced between the desktop and iOS. Clean Text for iOS is even easier to use, but less customizable. Since I don’t use Windows, Linux, or Android, etc. I’ll leave it for others to recommend their favorite text cleanup tools for those platforms in the comments.

List of posts in this series

• Free Your Mind, the Text Will Follow (Working With Text 1)
• RegEx 101 (Working With Text 2)
• Text-laundering (Working With Text 3)
• Lazy PowerPoint (Working With Text 4)
• Roll Your Own QDA (Working With Text 5)

Kerim

P. Kerim Friedman is a professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan. His research explores language revitalization efforts among indigenous Taiwanese, looking at the relationship between language ideology, indigeneity, and political economy. An ethnographic filmmaker, he co-produced the Jean Rouch award-winning documentary, ‘Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!’ about a street theater troupe from one of India’s Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs).

kerim.oxus.net/

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ToDoist (iOS/Android/Windows): ToDoist is my lifeblood. It helps me keep track of everything I have to do today, tomorrow, eventually. You can organize your tasks into projects, add notes, and bring on collaborators. ToDoist syncs across all devices, and there is even a browser version. The best part, I think, is that ToDoist syncs with Google Calendar, and in both directions: if I add things to Calendar with a certain tag, it adds to ToDoist and vice versa. That way, I can add a meeting to Calendar, and then ToDoist will remind me. Optionally, ToDoist can send you an email every morning with your day’s tasks. ToDoist is basically what keeps my life together.

Social media apps (iOS/Android/Windows): Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are my go-to social media apps. They help me talk to my colleagues back home who might have experience with this kind of research or in Senegal. They facilitate my live-fieldnotes ecosystem so that I can share what I’m learning in real-time.

WhatsApp (iOS/Android/Windows): Like the social media apps, WhatsApp keeps me in contact with colleagues back home, but since WhatsApp is very popular here in Dakar, it also keeps me in contact with my research assistants and peers.

GoogleMaps (iOS/Android/Windows): Until recently, the satellite photos of Dakar were a splotchy, pixelated mess, but in the last year they’ve cleared up and become a little more detailed. Some neighborhoods even have street view. So, when I’m learning a new bus route or taking a cab ride, I can follow the little blue dot (me) on my phone and tie specific landmarks that I see out the window to where I am in the city. It helps to add stars on major landmarks – homes or restaurants I’ve visited – so that I have a clearer orientation of where I am. This is a big help in a densely populated city like Dakar, where a lot of things look the same to the uninitiated.

Box (iOS/Android): Box is my cloud-service of choice. It’s encrypted, secure, and the only cloud-service approved for use in research by my institutional review board. I have a free membership through my university, but it would be well worth the price, too.

Microsoft OneNote (iOS/Android/Windows) or Notability (iOS): For the iPad, I currently use OneNote for my interviews, though I used to use Notability until it suddenly stopped working right when I needed it. (I should say that Notability has probably had the bugs worked out, so you should give it a shot, but I haven’t looked back since moving to OneNote.) Both apps sync with many cloud-based data storage systems, including Box. After converting my interview instruments to PDF, I load them into OneNote, and that allows me to take notes right on the PDF during the interview. Because OneNote automatically syncs with the cloud, I can access these files instantly on my laptop or iPhone. I’ve even inserted a photo from my phone into a file and then watched it appear on my iPad.

Notes (iOS): Notes is an app that comes with iOS. I use it to jot down thoughts, quotes, events, and notes throughout the day.

MagicPlan (iOS/Android): Part of my research is about the gendering of space. What kinds of spaces are allowable to which genders, and under what circumstances are genders segregated? To help me map gendered space in large extended family households, I use MagicPlan. MagicPlan is an interior design app used for mapping a home. It uses augmented reality by placing the user in the middle of a room, lining up arrows with corners, and then more-or-less taking a picture. Turn, next corner, snap. Turn, doorway, snap. Finish a room, attach it to the last room, and before you know it, you’ve got a house. Then I export to PDF, take it into Adobe Illustrator CC, and add some color coding. I’ve been using it for five years, and it’s only gotten faster and easier to use. The app is free to use, but exporting PDFs of the plans comes at a premium.

ScannerPro (iOS): If you’re doing research with funding from a major organization (e.g. Wenner-Gren, National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays), receipts are everything. If you’re dealing with a foreign bureaucracy like an ethical review board or ministry, you need to make copies of everything. If you have hand-written notes, interview instruments, or hand-drawn maps, you’ll want copies of those too. I use ScannerPro, an app that takes photos of documents, converts them to plain black-and-white, and uploads them to Box.

What do you use? Do you have any recommendations?

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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