Regex Basics Every Writer Should Know

The mental model

A regex is a tiny pattern language. Instead of searching for one exact string, you describe *what the text looks like* and let the engine find matches.

Five patterns worth memorizing

• \s+ — one or more whitespace characters (great for collapsing double spaces).
• \d+ — one or more digits.
• [A-Z][a-z]+ — a capitalized word.
• ^\s+|\s+$ — leading and trailing whitespace.
• (\w+)\s+\1 — a repeated word (great for finding "the the" typos).

Try them safely

Our Find and Replace Text tool supports regex mode with live highlighting, so you can iterate without breaking your draft.

One tip

Always test a regex on a copy first. Small patterns can match more than you expect.