Phrase Searches

Due to the data structure that allows Atticus to turn your text into a reflowable epub and beautiful PDF, there is a small quirk with the way find and replace currently works for searching more than one word at a time.

Searches with more than one word are sensitive to text formatting.

What that means is that when you are searching for more than one word, Atticus can be stumped by certain combinations of text formatting. Some examples are when one word of the searched phrase is in italics in the content of your book. It can also be missed when there is an em dash in the middle of the phrase.

However, when the entire phrase is within quotation marks or is italicized, Atticus will find it as expected. You can see examples of a search that shows when the phrase is found and when it is missed in the search results.

However, you can search for any individual word and all results will be found regardless of the formatting. We know how critical robust find and replace is for authors and will continue to work on ways to make sure all instances of a phrase are found. But we didn’t want to hold up the find and replace feature while we work on that improvement.