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
    2014-08-20T08:42:59+00:00

    Changing the font solved the problem for me, thank you.

    Although strangely, the font with which I was having the problem was Arial, which is more or less ubiquitous and definitely on my computer already. 

    Thanks again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-08-20T06:04:32+00:00

    ALL the Experts (MVP's) are LOST on this one - sorry, but i hate it when you have a problem and everyone around you are guessing like kids - TURN THE DAMNED AUTOCORRECT OFF. I'd  rather have it OFF than have these dumb spaces in my job application.  AND NO I dont want to change the font. AND all my languages are CORRECT.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-08-19T13:15:10+00:00

    I tried every fix listed on the first two pages - THIS is the one that worked for me!  THANK YOU!

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  4. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2014-06-30T22:33:43+00:00

    Instead of turning off the smart quotes, see what your language settings are. It's possible that you have a language such as French activated, for which it is perfectly normal to add a space next to punctuation.

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