I am having difficulty getting this subfunction of mine to work because when I pass it something and then change it it goes back to its original value in the main function.

Example:

    symrem (curword) 'removes symbols from the word currently being looked at

if I pass "don't" to symrem as the string and remove the apostrophe in the symrem procedure the symbol is still there when I go back to the main procedure. curword is still "don't". I am sure that the apostrophe is removed in the symrem procedure as I have watched it debug several times.

What am I missing that is causing the word not to change?
Is there any simple function that I can use to remove all the symbols from something?
Is it possible to make a function that returns something similar to in C++?

In case it's relevant this is my sub procedure:

Public Sub symrem(nw)

Do
nwold = nw

nw = Replace(nw, ".", "") 'takes out periods
nw = Replace(nw, ",", "") 'takes out commas
nw = Replace(nw, ",", "")

For i = 33 To 64 'takes out all non-letter characters
nw = Replace(nw, Chr$(i), "")
Next i

For i = 91 To 96
nw = Replace(nw, Chr$(i), "") 'takes out all non-letter characters
Next i

For i = 123 To 155
nw = Replace(nw, Chr$(i), "") 'takes out all non-letter characters
Next i

If nwold = nw Then
    Exit Do
End If
Loop


End Sub

Not sure if this is the problem as I havent seen the calling and called procedure. Do you have the brackets on the calling procedure IE

Sub CallingProcedure()
Dim curword as string
'Some code here
'then call the procedure
symrem curword
End sub

'Called procedure
symrem (curword)
'Do some stuff to curword
End sub

Hope this helps
Regards
Rob

not sure what your trying to achieve here, if its simply to strip out the characters then it would be best in a function, something liek this

Public Function symrem(nw) As String
For iLoop = 1 To Len(nw)
    Select Case Asc(Mid(nw, iLoop, 1))
        Case 65 To 90, 97 To 122
            NewString = NewString & Mid(nw, iLoop, 1)
    End Select
Next iLoop
symrem = NewString
End Function

Is that what you mean ?

So if you called the function as:
newword=symrem(nw)

then:

symrem=newstring is how you would return the value of newstring?

My problem was I didn't know how to return a value from a function in basic, I thought you had to do it all by reference.

well if sData was the variable containing the word you wanted stripping (for example "don't" then you woould have something like

sNewWord = symrem(sData)

That would pass the value of the variable (sData) to the function (symrem), which would then strip out the characters not needed and return the value to the specified variable (sNewWord)