Search and replace for an absence

[m5heath]

I am editing a book with a lot of speech in the text and so a lot of  double quotes. The scan has missed a large number of full stops at the end of sentences. So it might end "...and there the matter rested"

What I want to do is search for every double right quotation mark that is not preceded by a full stop and replace it with full stop plus double right quotation mark. Is there some clever, possibly GREP way to do that or do I have to search every sentence?

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

GREP will handle this just fine.

Wait, though — the solution I posted and you probably got in email isn't correct. Give me a minute to correct the GREP string.

ETA: See corrected string in next post.

[m5heath]

Thank so much for that clever but simple solution without GREP - and I will make a note of the GREP solution as  well. I just love this community!!!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Sorry, I jumped into this without enough coffee. This GREP F/R should do exactly what you need:

That actually uses exactly what you supposed: a "lookbehind" to see if the character/s before the target exist. This looks for a letter ahead of the closing quote, and if it finds it, replaces the quote with a quote-period.

Full stop. 🙂

[m5heath]

Fantastic! Really helpful. I'm not a GREP guru. Thank you so much. Am I allowed 2 correct answers?