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
    2015-10-22T03:05:43+00:00

    Its your FONT.

    You are probably using something like Helvetica Nueve.   Switch to Verdana.  Problem solved.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-12-20T18:43:14+00:00

    For reasons I haven't investigated, Word was inserting a Courier apostrophe in my Times New Roman document; the Courier apostrophe has extra space after it built in. I could change it to TNR. Not sure what's causing it, or what the continuing fix is, but I could fix it in the moment that way.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-04-02T15:26:05+00:00

    I have this same issue. I AM typing in the French language format - and I am required to type in this format in order to do my job.

    This happens with ANY file when I open it in ANY Microsoft Office application (Word, Outlook, Excel etc..) So I highly doubt that all the files on my computer have all of a sudden become corrupted.

    I have unchecked the box for "Detect language Automatically" but it has not resolved this issue.

    I hardly believe that the only solution that Microsoft can offer it's international customers is not to type in any other language but English.

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-07-20T08:24:35+00:00

    Which version of Word and what language are you using. The last time I saw this reported (many moons ago), it was a problem with the Italian version proofing tools.

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