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. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2012-12-20T22:42:02+00:00

    OK, thanks for the update.

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  2. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2012-12-20T19:38:54+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.

    This is interesting—and strange! Word might use a font, MS Mincho, with different spacing (horizontal and vertical spacing) for special characters. I wouldn't expect it to happen with an apostrophe in Times New Roman, though.

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  3. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2012-01-04T14:07:34+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.

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-01-03T20:40:57+00:00

    I am getting the same problem below, only with Office for Mac 2011.   So far I only get the issue in Word.  I am using the Advantage template that comes withe Office for 2011.   I have dutifully checked the keyboard and document language and both are correctly set to English or English (US).  

    Any other ideas?  It's not a corrupt document because I get this in all the Advantage template docs I do.

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