🚀 go-pugleaf

Eric --

Here's something for your parenthesis. It assumes you have a character style "Emphasis", plus a swatch w/ 100% magenta.



tell application "InDesign 2.0.2"
 
    set myDocument to active document
 
    tell myDocument
 
        set myPink to swatch "C=0 M=100 Y=0 K=0"
 
        set myStory to object reference of parent story of selection
 
        set myStyle to character style "Emphasis"
 
        tell myStory
 
            repeat with i from (count paragraphs) to 1 by -1
 
                try
 
                    set myOpenParen to index of (character 1 whose contents = "(") of paragraph i
 
                    set myCloseParen to index of (character 1 whose contents = ")") of paragraph i
 
                    set applied character style of characters myOpenParen thru myCloseParen to myStyle
 
                    set contents of character myCloseParen to ""
 
                    set contents of character myOpenParen to ""
 
                on error
 
                    set fill color of text of paragraph i to myPink
 
                end try
 
            end repeat
 
        end tell
 
    end tell
 
end tell



There's a bit of an issue in that if the script doesn't find an opening paren and a closing paren, it turns the whole paragraph pink. That's good if only 1 is missing, but it'll be a bother if both are missing, because it means you don't want to emphasize anything. I'll see if I can get the error-checking to work right, but this'll get you started.

jay