too many spaces

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Guest

When editing my document. I was told to use the show/hide feature to delete
any extra spaces. Extra being more than 2 from the period to the next
sentence. On some sentences the show/hide will put 1 dot between the word but
then ther is a space after the dot and the next letter. It looks as though it
is trying to show me that there is only 1 space there but you can see that
there is an extra space. I am not sure if my settings our correct but I set
in the grammer settings 1 space after each period thinking this would take
the extra space out but no such luck.
 
If your paragraphs are justified to both margins, then the width of a single
space will vary as Word adjusts space width to make each line equal length.
Trust the number of dots - they indicate the correct space count. BTW, modern
typography specifies a SINGLE space after an end-of-sentence period.
Typically, you don't want mutliple spaces anywhere in a doc. To align text,
use tabs or indents, never multiple spaces. I recommend you run Replace, find
two spaces, replace with single space, replace all, repeat until zero
changes.
 
You will see extra space if the text is justified, but if you see only one
dot, then there is only one space character.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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Thank you Ted and Suzanne, I understand it a lot more now. How do I get to
the replace feature, Ted.
 
Ted, Having thought about this more. Is this replace feature going to take
out the double spaces after each period as well. Ultimately, I want 2 spaces
after each period and 1 space in between the words within the document. How
can I use the replace feature to get the single spaces in the document but
keep the double spaces after periods and colon headings.
Heidi
 
As Ted has said, unless you're using a monospaced font, you really *don't*
want two spaces after a period.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Hi Suzanne, okay I get it now. I guess when I think about it I end up
deleating them anyway. I will run the replace after each document and
replace double spaces with single spaces. BTW, the font that I use for most
of my documents is Ariel 11.

Thanks again,
Heidi
 
Would Ariel 11 be a monospaced font?

Heidi said:
Hi Suzanne, okay I get it now. I guess when I think about it I end up
deleating them anyway. I will run the replace after each document and
replace double spaces with single spaces. BTW, the font that I use for most
of my documents is Ariel 11.

Thanks again,
Heidi
Click to expand...
 
Hi Heidi

No. A font like Courier is monospaced, which means that every letter takes
up the same amount of horizontal space. Arial is proportionally spaced, so
that in a word like "illumination" you can see that the i's and l's take up
very little space, but the m takes up a lot of space.

You might find the following article interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
 
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