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
    2013-05-14T18:50:17+00:00

    This solved my problem. Thanks

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-05-03T14:07:05+00:00

    If you are typing in French, then you will not be using the apostrophe for contractions such as "don't" or for possessives, and very likely the default spacing is correct.

    If you are typing in English and have that language applied to the text and are still having the problem, then there is something else going on.

    French uses the apostrophe more than English for contractions (ceci m'interesse, l'école, etc) and a following space is definitely not correct.

    I have the same problem and it appears to be related to the font. If I reapply the Normal style or change the font, the problem disappears.

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  3. 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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  4. Anonymous
    2012-12-20T21:20:45+00:00

    I was able to fix this problem by changing the type from Adobe Gothic Std B (which I was using only because it differentiated what I was typing form surrounding text) to Times Roman--problem solved,  Even though the Adobe type appears on the Word list of fonts, it created this problem,

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