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
    2010-07-20T08:08:07+00:00

    In Windows Regional Settings, change the keyboard associated with the input language from 'US International'  to the correct pattern keyboard that you are using e.g. US.

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  2. 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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  3. Anonymous
    2011-02-04T19:23:34+00:00

    I checked my language, but it is set to English.  When I type an apostrophe it adds a large space after.  When I turn on the show/hide button there is no dot for a space between the apostrophe and the next letter, just a large dead space about the size of 3 spaces.

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  4. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2011-02-04T19:34:52+00:00

    Note that the language may change at the insertion point, unless you turn off the "Detect language automatically" option in the Language dialog box. (To display the dialog box in Word 2007/2010, click the Review tab, and then click the Set Language button.)

    If the above is not the issue, you should treat your document as corrupt. See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

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