Strange Formatting Mark

[Cassandra Berg]

I just opened a Word 2003 document someone sent me and some of the spaces are
wider than normal. I turned on 'Show All Formatting Marks' and they look like
the character for a non-breaking space ( a little circle) but there is a
space after them and they don't hold words together. What are they?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Could be em-space characters or en-space characters (see the Insert
tab,Symbols->Symbol->More Symbols->Special Characters)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Both en and em spaces use this symbol. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

 

[grammatim]

Typing a space after a non-breaking space defeats the purpose of the
non-breaking space!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There are two ways of interpreting "a space after them."

1. En and em spaces are indeed represented by the same degree symbol that is
used for nonbreaking spaces, but there is space (not a space character but
just space) after the symbol because the en/em space is wider than a single
space.

2. If a nonbreaking space is followed by an ordinary space character, it's a
good bet that the copy was pasted from the Web. Because multiple spaces are
not honored in HTML unless they're nonbreaking ones, multiple spaces are
converted to a series of nonbreaking spaces finished off with an ordinary
space. So if you copy text from an email and paste it into Word, and the
email was written by someone who puts two spaces after a period (and awful
lot of people still do), then you'll see these pairs of nonbreaking and
ordinary spaces between sentences.