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

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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

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-05-10T21:37:12+00:00

    Thanks for your advice.  But it didn't help me.  I went back to my document and checked.  And it sure does look like it's in English.  Everything that I typed is in English.  Thanks again for your advice.

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  2. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2014-09-13T17:56:54+00:00

    It will "fix" it only by using straight quotes instead of "curly quotes," which will make your document look terrible!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-09-13T12:39:07+00:00

    Just in case there is any Mac-specific factor involved, you'd probably be better off posting this as a new question at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macword.

    i have found the answer to the extra space after apostrophy.

    make sure you are using üs language--check tools,click auto correct,click auto format as you type,

    take check mark out of the box---straight quote etc etc.

    this will fix it. Basil Moore

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  4. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2014-08-20T11:53:10+00:00

    Have you actually tried selecting all the text and applying the correct language? Since language is a character property, it can change at the insertion point, especially if you haven't disabled "Detect language automatically" at Review tab | Language | Set Proofing Language.

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