Share via

Extra space after apostrophe

Anonymous
2010-07-19T19:31:29+00:00

Every time I type an apostrophe " ' " Word adds an extra space before the next letter.

For example, If I type don't, Word makes it come out Don' t 

Needless to say, this is annoying.  Does anyone have an idea how to make this problem go away?

Thnx

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous
2010-07-20T08:14:10+00:00

Hi RER

This sounds to me as if the language formatting may be set to something other than English. French, perhaps? Some languages require spaces before or after punctuation, so Word does this for the user. Which can be annoying if you aren't actually typing in that language.

At the bottom of the Word status bar you may see a little box with the language. If you don't right-click the status bar (that's the bar across the bottom of the Word windows,  in case you're not familiar with the term) and choose "Language" from the context menu. This will tell you the language formatting of the selected text.

If the text in the document is not an English "dialect", and you want the entire document to be in English, press Ctrl+A to select the document. Click on this "Language" button in the status bar, then select the language you want to use from the dialog box that pops up.

Cindy Meister, VSTO/Word MVP

Was this answer helpful?

40+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

61 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2011-11-13T10:50:39+00:00

    I was in your position as well.

    I actually discovered that I was working on a word document that had a particular font, but I didn't have that font installed on my computer. While word won't always allow it, sometimes it will allow you to work using a font that you don't have installed, but it comes with very minor twitches, like a large space after an apostrophy.

    To check, look at the font being used in word and the go to c:\windows\fonts\ and search to see if you have that font. If not, close the doc, download the font from the net (there's heaps of places giving away free fonts) and then copy it to your windows\fonts folder. Then open the doc again and you should be right.

    Was this answer helpful?

    100+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2012-01-25T19:38:48+00:00

    OK, I think I found it!!  (I've never been able to answer these before!!)

    OK, so for me, I have Portuguese and English keyboard options, but I was getting the apostrophe space stupid thing, too - even though mine is set to English.  That's when I noticed my font.  For some stupid reason, when I went to write an apostrophe, Outlook changed the font to MS Shell Dig 2 - no idea why.  I can't find the font in the list, either, which is weird.

    What worked for me: select all the type, and select the font you want.  The spaces disappear.

    It bothers me slightly that I don't know why this started or what I would need to do to ensure it never happens again, but... I have only seen it this once, so here's hoping!

    Was this answer helpful?

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2014-06-30T19:32:37+00:00

    HERE IS THE FIX

    This was driving me crazy - so i figured i'd share what I ended up doing to fix it.  Pretty simple really.

    on the mac version of word - do the following:

    1. Go to Word > Preferences
    2. Click on AutoCorrect
    3. Click on the AutoFormat as you Type tab
    4. Uncheck the "Straight quotation marks with smart quotation marks" box

    That did it for me.  The conversion to Smart Quotes is a default setting - and it forces some font substitutions that result on the extra space after the quotation mark. 

    Hope that helps someone..

    Was this answer helpful?

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2011-02-04T19:23:34+00:00

    I checked my language, but it is set to English.  When I type an apostrophe it adds a large space after.  When I turn on the show/hide button there is no dot for a space between the apostrophe and the next letter, just a large dead space about the size of 3 spaces.

    Was this answer helpful?

    9 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments