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
    2017-02-09T18:25:40+00:00

    This was helpful, though my solution was a little different. For some reason, when applying an em dash character, it changed my font to "em dash"??? I never realized this, as everything else, i.e., all the characters, looked like Times New Roman, which was what my document was written in. So I simply selected all and changed the font back to Times New Roman and it fixed the problem. Crazy issue, but easy fix (when you know what to do).

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-12T14:50:36+00:00

    It's best not to use Chinese fonts like JengHei for English and other Latin Script languages.  They are not meant for it and sometimes they have strange or wider glyphs for punctuation marks or other characters.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-07T22:32:24+00:00

    I experienced the same issue.  After reading the list of solutions I checked my Language settings - set to English Canada.  I then Ctrl+A entire document and switched to English US - save.  Issue still persisted - switched back to English Canada.  I then Ctrl + A entire document again and changed FONT STYLE from Microsoft JengHei Light to Calibri - saved and tested.  This solved the problem.  I then Ctrl+A document again and changed font back to Microsoft JengHei Light and the problem came back (did not save this time) and just hit Ctrl+Z (back).  So it appears to be an issue with the font style - at least in my case.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2016-06-30T17:50:05+00:00

    The suggestion for the font check was right on.  I had copied an address from a website into Word and of course it kept that font for the rest of the doc.   Font changed, and voila.  Thx

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments