Word 2016 use find and replace to add period after "et al"

I'm trying to find all instances of "et al(space)" in a document and replace them with "et al(period)(space)". In Find and Replace with wildcards, I'm typing:

Find: (et al)( )
Replace: \1.\2

Word finds the right character sequence, but replaces "et al(space)" with "et al(space)(period)(space)".

I've tried various combinations of find-and-replace wildcards, but Word keeps adding that extra space before the period.

I'm not sure if this makes a difference, but the text is in a table.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

EDIT: I didn't need to use wildcards for this specific case, but was having the same problem (spaces and punctuation being added in the wrong place) in other cases where I did need to use wildcards. I had to turn off Track Changes for the wildcards to work. Kind of an annoying bug, but /shrug.

Answer

Don't use wildcards. "et al " can be replaced using "et al. " without issue:

I highlighted both entries to show the trailing spaces.