Two different spaces and search order

[Judy]

If I click on Show/Hide I can see two different spaces in my headings.
One is represented by a small black dot, which I believe is the norm.
The other is represented by a raised small circle. This becomes
bothersome in sorting, as the black dots sort ahead of the small
circles. Does anyone know why the small circles occur and how to avoid
them? Doing a find and replace is not a practical solution as this is
a recurring problem.

 

[Terry Farrell]

The feint dot is a standard space; the raised circle is a hard space
(non-breaking space) that is inserted by Ctrl+Shft+Space. The hard space is
used to keeps words together. For example, if you don't want a date (e.g. 25
Jan 2012) to break at the end of a line, you use hard spaces between 25, Jan
and 2012 so that it stays all on one line or if it has to break, the whole
date moves to the next line.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Nonbreaking spaces are often seen in text copied from the Web (or emails)
since HTML converts ordinary spaces to nonbreaking ones whenever there is
more than one in succession (as when users press the Spacebar twice at the
end of a sentence). If this is not done, HTML renders any number of spaces
as a single space.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Judy]

Nonbreakingspacesare often seen in text copied from the Web (or emails)
since HTML converts ordinaryspacesto nonbreaking ones whenever there is
more than one in succession (as when users press the Spacebar twice at the
end of a sentence). If this is not done, HTML renders any number ofspaces
as a single space.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USAhttp://word.mvps.org






- Show quoted text -

Thanks for these two posts that explain clearly the two different
types of spaces. I have a document, which is a table of one column.
Each cell has Heading 1 with this format: 2009 09 22 tu 1130 Meeting.
All the spaces are ordinary spaces. If I type this Heading 1: 2009 09
22 z 1130 all the spaces are ordinary until I add a space after 1130.
As soon as I add the space after 1130, the space between z and 1130
automatically converts to a non-breaking space.