Macro of the Month – February 2025 – AccentAlyse

Identifies potential inconsistencies with accents and other diacritical marks

Welcome to all the new subscribers from my recent webinars and workshops for the EFA Houston chapter, the European Association of Science Editors, AFEPI Ireland, and the Mediterranean Editors and Translators. Please contact me if you would like your editing organization to host a macro training session.

Maintaining consistent accent usage is crucial when editing documents that contain specialized terms, proper names, or text in multiple languages. This month’s macro helps you identify areas where accents and other special characters may have been applied inconsistently.

This Month’s Macro – AccentAlyse

AccentAlyse lists all the words in your document that contain accent marks and other diacritical characters (like é, ü, ñ), showing the frequency of each word. It also lists any variants that contain either different special characters (e.g., “père” and “pêre”) or none at all (e.g., “façade” and “facade”), helping you discover and fix any incorrect variants before you begin detailed editing.

How It Works

To run the macro:

1. Open the document you are editing

2. Run AccentAlyse

3. Important: Wait for the analysis to complete—do not use your keyboard or mouse during this process

How to Use the AccentAlyse Report

The report helps you quickly spot where accents and other special characters are inconsistently applied.

1. Read down the list of words

2. The number after each word indicates its frequency

3. Pay attention to the variant pairs to discover inconsistencies

4. The macro also lists words containing special characters that don’t have spelling variants

5. Use this information to correct mistakes in the document

Tip: Add the correct forms to your style sheet as you verify them.

AccentAlyse produces an "AccentAlyse report" that lists all terms containing special characters, any variants, and their frequency.

Download the code: www.wordmacrotools.com/macros/A/AccentAlyse

Related Macros

Macros for working with languages:

• LanguageSetUS / LanguageSetUK: sets the language of the entire document

• LanguageToggle: changes the language setting of the selected word and italicizes it

Macros that identify other types of inconsistency errors:

• AcronymAlyse: generates a list of all acronyms in a document and their frequency

• CitationAlyse: cross-checks the reference list against the in-text citations and flags potential inconsistencies

• HyphenAlyse: identifies potential hyphenation inconsistencies

• ProperNounAlyse: identifies potential inconsistencies among proper nouns

Have a question or want to suggest a macro for a future newsletter? Reply to this email and let me know.

Happy macroing,
Jennifer

ps: Don’t forget to back up your macros.