Word puts big spaces. Ways to remove large spaces between words in Word

Instructions

First, you need to determine what caused the deformation of the text. To do this, on the control panel of the MS Word document, click the icon ¶ “Show all characters”. Your document will display all the characters that are not visible in normal mode (spaces, enter sign, and so on).

The simplest reason for its appearance is “doubling” spaces, that is, placing not one, but two or more spaces between words. Dealing with this problem is quite simple. Select Replace from the Document Control Panel. When a new window opens, “Find and Replace,” enter two spaces in the top line and one in the bottom line, then click the “Replace All” button. Word will automatically change all double spaces to single spaces. Do this several times until the dialog box that appears says “Word has finished searching the document. Number of replacements made: 0." Click OK, close the Find and Replace window, and continue working in Word.

The second reason: the use of non-breaking spaces in web formatting. When showing hidden ones, the non-breaking space is also visible - it looks like (small circle above the word). Removing them is also quite simple, using the same autocorrect feature as in the case of double spaces. Before the Find and Replace window, select the non-breaking space icon and copy it with the right mouse button or Ctrl+C. Then paste it into the top line of the Find and Replace window (also using the right mouse button or Ctrl+V), and type a space in the bottom line. And click "Replace All". Here it is enough to do it once.

Finally, the third reason for stretching the distance between words is the use of non-breaking input in web formatting (the symbol when displayed looks like an arrow bent to the left). In this case, unfortunately, automatic replacement or any other automatic Word technique cannot be used. The fastest way to straighten the formatting in this situation is to place a tab (that is, press the Tab key) at the end of each line, or manually replace the non-breaking input with a regular one (Enter key).

Video on the topic

Transfers, separating words by syllables, are common to see on the pages of fiction books. However, in cases where the text is not read, but skimmed, hyphens only distract the reader’s attention. This fully applies to texts for the web. Formatting methods in well-known editors also make it possible to make the text readable and even, without resorting to breaking words into syllables. Therefore, if you are preparing a report or text for a website, you may need to remove hyphens before publishing them.

Instructions

First of all, decide what you are editing in Microsoft Word. In MS Word there are two options to delete in . They differ depending on the way in which the hyphens were originally placed. There are also two options for hyphenation: manually and .

If hyphens were placed using automatic placement, go to the “Tools” menu and select “Language”. Select "Hyphenate" from the drop-down menu. You will see a small window with settings for this function. To hyphenate, uncheck the Automatically hyphenate option and click OK.

If the hyphens were placed manually, then they will have to be forcibly removed manually. However, this option is quite long and labor-intensive. For this case, MS Word provides . Go to the "Edit" menu and select the "Replace" command. A similar action occurs when pressing the Ctrl+H keys. In the Find and Replace window that appears, expand additional options by clicking the More button. At the bottom you will see a “Special” button. By clicking on it, select “Soft” from the list. In the main search window, a special “^-” will appear in the “Find” field. To remove hyphens, leave the “Replace with” field empty. Next, replace each character found or automatically remove all hyphens in .

Video on the topic

Changing the distance between words in the texts of web pages is not such a trivial task as it might seem. Two, three or more consecutive spaces between adjacent words, according to HTML language standards, will have no effect on the spacing between them - the browser will display them as a single space. But, of course, there are tools to solve this problem.

Instructions

One option is to use a special HTML character called " " (non-breakable-space). It is displayed in the same way as a regular space, but the peculiarity is that if two words are separated by such a special space, the browser will consider it to be one single word that cannot be separated. Due to this feature, the browser will not interfere with the display of several of these placed in a row, i.e. will not replace multiple spaces with one. This special character is indicated by the following set of characters: "&nbsр;" (without quotes). Look in the document source code as a paragraph of text with words, separated by these special characters, maybe like this:

This is a sample of a paragraph of text.

Here distance between the first and second it will be normal, between the second and third it will be doubled, and between the third and fourth it will be tripled.

Much more control distance m between words using a style description language (CSS). In CSS, the corresponding definition may look like this: word-spacing: 15px; Here is the size of the space between adjacent words at 15 pixels. A style attribute can be added to almost any tag. For example, a paragraph tag with this attribute specifying distance 20 pixels between all words paragraph might look like this:

Paragraph of text with magnified distance m between words

Typically, style files are placed in the header or in separate files. In such a block you can set several values for the distances between words and package them into different classes, and in the body of the document indicate links to the corresponding classes in tags. For example, a description named dblSpace might look like this: And the paragraph tag from to this in the body of the document will be, for example, like this:

A paragraph with wide spacing between words

Video on the topic

Sources:

how to change spacing in 2019

Having too big spaces between words in the text may be due to several reasons. Both the reasons themselves and the methods for eliminating them largely depend on the format of the document, since changing the distance between words, used, for example, in HTML documents is not possible in TXT documents and vice versa.

Instructions

Find out where the document is stored. Basic text formats (txt, csv, etc.) do not support formatting tags, so there are most likely large gaps between words consist of using double (or more) or tab characters instead of regular ones spaces.
To change the distance between words in such a document, open it in a text editor. You need to find and replace all spaces and tabs with single spaces. To do this, for example, in Microsoft, press the keyboard shortcut CTRL + H. In the replacement dialog that opens, enter two spaces in the “Find” field, and one space in the “Replace with” field and click the “Replace All” button. Then again Once open the replace dialog, click the Find box and click the More button. In the additional panel that opens, find the “Special” button, click it and select the “Tab character” line from the drop-down list. In the Replace With field, type a space and click the Replace All button. If you used double tabs or triple spaces, you must repeat these replacement procedures several times.

If the text is stored in files in doc, docx, and other formats that support formatting, then one more reason is added to the reasons given above. It consists in the fact that all or part of the text is set to “width” alignment. Open the document in a text editor that has options for working with text formatting - for example, in Microsoft Word. Select the desired part of the text and press the key combination CTRL + L. With this command you will set the normal alignment (left).

There can be several reasons for too large spaces between words in Word documents - this may be a consequence of the formatting commands used for the entire text or individual blocks of it, or the use of special characters instead of regular spaces. Each of the reasons has its own methods of elimination, but if it is not possible to find out exactly the source of the defect in the text, you can consistently apply all the means.

Instructions

Start investigating the possible causes of excessive spaces between words, for example by checking the text formatting. If text is set to fit the width of the document, the text editor ensures that the first letters of the first words of each line are on the same vertical line, as are the last letters of the last words of the lines. To achieve this, the editor stretches the intervals between words in those lines where the number of characters is insufficient.

Select the problematic part of the text of the open document. If the spacing between words throughout the document needs correction, you can select it by pressing the hotkey combination CTRL + A (this is the Russian letter “F”). Once you've done this, click the left alignment command button - it's located on the Home tab in the Paragraph command group. You can replace clicking a button by pressing CTRL + L.

Check to see if tabs are used instead of spaces. To do this, enable the display of “non-printing characters” in the document - the corresponding button is located in the same group of “Paragraph” commands on the “Home” tab. Space characters will be indicated by raised dots above the baseline, and tab characters will be indicated by small arrows. If you find that these are the cause of the increased spaces, copy one of the tab characters and press CTRL + H to open the Find and Replace dialog.

Paste the copied space into the “Find” field, and enter a regular space into the “Replace with” field. Then click the "Replace All" button.

If, when the display of non-printable characters mode is turned on, it turns out that the reason for too large spacing is the presence of not one, but several spaces between words, then use the same search and replace dialog. Press the keyboard shortcut CTRL + H, put two spaces in the “Find” field, one space in the “Replace with” field, and then click the “Replace All” button. After that, press the same button again - in case there are not two spaces between the words, but more. Click the button until Word reports that the number of replacements completed is zero.

Don’t know how to use Word or have forgotten how to find any important function for editing text? If so, this article will definitely interest you.

During time, people often face the problem of large gaps. Below we will tell you how to correctly perform width alignment in Word, and how to use various functions in this program. So, after reading this short course, you will be able to successfully perform all the work you need to do.

First, let's define what such an expression as “width alignment” actually means. This is how your finished text will appear on the page. Indeed, in addition to width alignment, there are three more types of its distribution:

on the left edge;
in the center;
on the right edge.

And each of them has its own algorithm of actions.

How can I align text in width?

So, in order for you to successfully complete the width alignment process, you need to do the following:

Click anywhere in the paragraph of your text that you need to align.
Now find the “Home” tab at the top of the Word page. It has five subgroups ("Clipboard", "Font", "Paragraph", "Styles", "Editing"), among which you need to pay attention to the "Paragraph" group.
After going to this group, find the “Width” button in it and immediately click.
Your text is now aligned.

How not to align text

You don't need to use the keyboard's Spacebar or Tab buttons to align. Since this will take you a lot of time, and the main width of the text will be either larger or smaller.

How to remove spaces after alignment

It should be noted that once you have finished the job of aligning the text to the width, your concern will not end there, since you may well end up with large spaces between words. But this problem is also extremely easy to fix. Below we offer you several methods that will help answer the question - how to remove spaces when aligning by width.

Reasons for large spaces in text

Before moving on to eliminating large gaps, it would be wise to determine the reason for their occurrence, since each of them has its own individual way of solving it.

There are several reasons for this problem:

Large spaces can occur due to the use of various commands when performing line alignment.
They appear due to the use of special characters instead of spaces.
Formatting text or some parts of it after justification can also cause this problem.
If you typed the “End of Line” character and then pressed the ENTER+SHIFT keys, you will automatically move to the next line of your text, after which large spaces will form.

Tricks for closing large gaps

If you are unable to determine what exactly is the origin of these largest gaps, then simply follow all the elimination techniques suggested below. And remember the above reasons for the future, so as not to accidentally leave a large gap in the text.

Removing Large Spaces

The first way to solve this problem is that you simply need to remove the large spacebar and put a normal one in its place; to do this, you need to simultaneously press three buttons on the keyboard of your computer: SHIFT + CTRL + SPACEBAR.

Hyphenation

In order to get rid of large spaces in the entire text at once, you need to:

select it completely;
after that, go to the “Page Layout” tab;
There, find the “Hyphenation” tab and click “Auto”.

After this the problem will be solved.

Tabulation

Find out if tabs were used instead of spaces. To do this, you need to enable the display of “non-printing characters” in the text. To perform this action you must do the following:

go to the “Home” tab;
in the “Paragraph” group, click the “Non-printing characters” button (¶).

After completing the steps presented, all non-printing characters will be displayed in the text, and you will be able to find out whether tabs are causing the problem.

If so, then you just need to copy one of them and press CTRL+F, after which you will have a replacement window. In the first field of this window, insert text with a large space, and in the second - the text created by pressing three buttons on your keyboard SHIFT + CTRL + SPACEBAR. After that, you need to click on the “Find and Replace” button.

After completing all of the above steps, the replacement will be made and large gaps in the document will disappear.

Inter-sign intervals

If the cause of large spaces is inter-character spacing, then you should do the following:

in the top menu, find the “File” tab;
then follow it;
in the menu that opens, select the “Settings” tab;
after that, you will have a table with parameters, and you will need to select the “Advanced” item, and in it check the “Do not expand character spacing in a line with a break.”

Conclusion

After reading this article, you learned how to correctly perform width alignment in Word. Now, when you need to perform the named action when editing your text, you can solve all the problems yourself. Also, now you can identify all the causes of the so-called large gaps and eliminate them yourself.

Extra spaces in documents created in the Word text editor are quite common. Novice computer users are especially prone to this problem when they try to align texts by setting numerous spaces, which ultimately results in difficulties with subsequent editing of text documents. You can also find large spaces between words and in documents of experienced users. Here they arise most often due to the peculiarities of text alignment to the width of the document. In this article we will talk about how to correct the situation in both cases.

You can see all the problems with spaces in your document by turning on the mode for displaying hidden formatting characters using this button in the main menu of the text editor.

In a properly formatted document, in which there is only one space between words, there should be only one period between those same words. If there are more dots, it means there are extra spaces in the document that it is advisable to remove. In the example below, all extra spaces are marked with red squares.

How to remove extra spaces in Word
Solutions offered on the Internet recommend using a search for double spaces and replacing them with single ones. But what if you use not only double spaces, but also triple ones or those containing four, five or more spaces in a row? You can, of course, auto-replace first five spaces with a single, then four, then replace triples and get to doubles, but there is a more elegant solution. You must also use search and replace, but use a macro substitution in the form of a regular expression as the search source. It sounds complicated and incomprehensible, but it is implemented quite simply as follows:

Wildcard expressions can also be used to find and replace other characters in a document by replacing the space with the appropriate character.

How to remove extra characters in Word when aligning text width
The problem with wide justified spaces occurs when the length of the words contained in a line does not allow for the intended text alignment other than by setting large spaces between words. Most often this happens in subheadings, when there are few words in the lines, and the text editor cannot automatically hyphenate the words. Enforcing the use of non-breaking spaces can help in this case.

This is done as follows.
The examples discussed above were shown using the Word 2007 text editor as an example. In other versions of this program, namely Word 2003, Word 2010, Word 2013 and Word 2016, everything is done in the same way.

When typing text or in a downloaded file in Word, you may notice that there are large spaces between words. Don't be alarmed, this is normal and completely fixable. In our article we will try to figure out why this happens and how to remove large spaces in Word.

Justification

If we look at how to remove large spaces in Word, the first thing we need to talk about is the problem with alignment. After all, it is the most common one. Although its essence lies in the little things, and users make mistakes simply out of carelessness. But first things first. Let's figure out how to remove large spaces between words in Word if the problem is with the width alignment.

There are two solutions. Let's start with the one that turns out to be the simplest. Try changing the alignment - instead of the "width" option, select "left". Of course, it is possible that this method will not work. After all, often the problem lies in the formatting of the file. Or it may be that this alignment does not suit you. Then use the second method.

The second method is that we will use hotkeys: CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR. Who doesn’t know, the combination of these keys gives that very short space bar. All you need to do is replace large spaces with short ones.

Problem with non-printable end-of-line character

We have already figured out how to remove large spaces in Word if the cause is incorrect alignment. But although this problem is the most common, it is not the only one. Now we will analyze the situation when the “hero of the occasion” is a non-printable “end of line” character.

We won’t rant about what an unprintable sign is and why it is needed in Word; it’s better to get straight to the point. First of all, you will need to enable the display of these same symbols. This is done by clicking on the corresponding button, which is located on the top panel, in the “Home” tab. However, you can see its location in the proposed image.

By clicking on this button, you will see all non-printing characters, including the “end of line”. It is this symbol that does us harm. It looks like a curved arrow pointing to the left. All you have to do is remove it. After this, the spaces are normalized.

So you’ve learned how to remove large spaces in Word when the problem lies in the non-printable “end of line” character. By the way, this sign is placed when you press the SHIFT+ENTER key combination, so be careful not to accidentally place it.

Tab problem

Large spaces can also be caused by tabs. We also won’t go into what it is. I just want to say right away that this sign is again non-printable, and it is placed when you press the TAB key.

You might have already guessed that since this character is non-printable, its removal occurs, as in the previous example, by displaying non-printing characters. That's exactly how it is. Turn on display and look for short arrows pointing to the right in the text. This is tabulation. Like last time, you need to change all these arrows to spaces, and the text will look normal - large spaces will disappear.

Replacing large spaces with short ones

So, we have learned the last, third way to remove large spaces in Word text. But what to do if there are an unimaginable number of tabs throughout the text. Agree, few people want to remove them one by one on their own. That is why we will now present a method that will help you instantly change all these characters to the short spaces we need.

Probably everyone has heard about “Replacement” in Word. This is the function we will use. To begin, copy one tab character to the clipboard (CTRL+C). After that, run "Find and Replace" (CTRL+H). There will be two fields: "Find" and "Replace". Place the copied tab character in the first one, and put a space in the second one. Click the "Replace All" button and all large spaces will be replaced with short ones.