Searching for ff-ligatures »connecting« two syllables ...

[Klаus]

Hi there!

Is it possible to search my InDesign text for all those ff-ligatures which are connecting two syllables of a given word?

Example:

an ff-ligature in »offensive« should be found, another one in »offspring« not

Thanks a lot!

[winterm · Accepted solution]

Simple enough, if your syllables are easy to count. This will work for a, e, i, o, u in CS6 and all CC flavors:

[aeiou]\Kff(?=a|e|i|o|u)

If you expect to encounter any other character of a certain glyph set in your doc, you may need to use pattern [=a=] instead of a plain a, and so on.

[Klаus]

This is a GREP string, right? Works like a dream, though I have no idea why

Thanks a  big big lot!

[camilo_umana]

winterm,

very nice your grep.

i had a similar problem and made a list of words with a different method (eliminating those without ff) but was bizarre.

I used your grep but it marked just the ligature.

How can I adapt it to search for all those words with any ligature?

thanks

[winterm]

As you know, ligatures depend entirely on the font you’re using.  AFAIK, GREP knows nothing about it, so you can't search for 'ligatures' as such, just for certain combinations: ff, fi, ffi, ffl, fl, fj, whatever else.

Here’s the one which finds words containing ff:

\w*ff\w*

and a bit more inclusive version (allows dashes, apostrophes...):

\S*ff\S*

[camilo_umana]

Barb,

Thanks. It is clean, short and straight.

Best regards.

[Klаus]

Looks like I simply have to learn to use that GREP thing. Any recommendation for starting that, book, website, mystic herbs?

[Doug A Roberts]

i've been using Peter Kahrel's overview:

GREP in InDesign - O'Reilly Media

plus i've found Jongware's 'What the GREP' script very useful:

Indesign GREP Help​

since as well as pointing out errors, it'll list what a grep is literally doing in words.