I never knew of the existence of stylesheets until the copyedit came back for my first novel. They struck me as such a good idea that ever since I've tried (and failed) to keep one up to date as I'm writing a novel. The reason why they fail is that I change my mind as to what style to use as I'm writing. For example, I couldn't decide whether the antagonists in DREAM PARIS were pierrots or Pierrots. In COSMOPOLITAN PREDATORS!, I couldn't decide whether a character was named young man or Young Man. I came about the solution by using the **occur** function. **M-x occur pierrot** **occur** lists lines containing a regexp in a separate buffer. Since Emacs regexps are case insensitive by default, the above finds both pierrot and Pierrot. It opens a buffer rather like the one in the self referential example below: ``` 7 matches in 5 lines for "pierrot" in buffer: workout.org 16:The reason why they fail is that I change my mind as to what style to use as I'm writing. For example, I couldn't decide whether the antagonists in my most recently completed novel, DREAM PARIS were pierrots or Pierrots. In COSMOPOLITAN PREDATORS!, I couldn't decide whether a character was named young man or Young Man. 21:M-x occur pierrot 24:Emacs regexps are case insensitive by default, so the above finds pierrot and Pierrot. It opens a buffer rather like the example below: 31:M-s h l pierrot 34:highlights lines with pierrot in. ``` Clicking or hitting enter on a line in the Occur buffer jumps you to the original location in the text. A big advantage of **occur** is that you can look at the words in situ before deciding on the final style and running a **query-replace-regexp** to replace them all. Another useful mode in when looking at styles is **hi-lock** mode. **M-s h l pierrot** The above highlights lines containing the regexp pierrot. A really useful feature of hi-lock mode is that it highlights on the fly, highlighting lines as you type in the words. I use this feature to act as a reminder of whether I'm typing in the right (or wrong) style. As a bonus, hi-lock mode allows you to choose from a pallete of colours. Use **M-n** and **M-p** to scroll through the choices, or enter your own choice - very useful when tracking more than one style.