Spaces at the beginning of a line, in WORD

[JohnnyGottaKeyboard]

I'm old fashioned and always type two spaces after a period (okay, so maybe I'm just old). Normally in Word, it will keep the two spaces together at the end of a line. I mean when you are in the middle of a paragraph, but a sentence within the paragraph happens to conclude at the very end of a line and the program drops down to the next line for the start of the next sentence (in the same paragraph). -whew! That explanation was exhausting and I'm not even to the problem yet.

Anyway, in my current ms the program is not keeping the two periods together at the end of the line. It will occasionally drop one or sometimes both spaces down to the next line, resulting in a not flush left margin. Anyone have any idea of what setting I might have flubbed up to make it do this? It’s only on the one ms.

[Manuel Royal]

Huh. Is this document from the same normal.dot template as the other documents? Did you create the document, or did it come from (spooky music) the outside?

First thing -- sounds stupid, but did you try just refreshing the view, or closing Word, then starting it again and opening the document? Sometimes there are strange glitches in the way the document is displayed.

I'd look at the paragraph format settings. Can't think of any that would cause that, though.

Try this -- under Tools, in Options, set View / Formatting Marks to "All". Maybe you've got some non-breaking spaces in there. They'd show up as little circles. If that's the case, just replace those with regular spaces and you're good.

[JohnnyGottaKeyboard]

Nope. They show up just as dots (like all the other spaces). It is very odd. It doesn't do it to any other ms. This ms is my original work, but it was transferred to a mac at one point and then brought back to the PC. That's the only thing I can think may have effected it.

Thanks for your help, btw.

[Manuel Royal]

Maybe try selecting all the text and changing the font. What the hell.

Or you could open a blank document and cut & paste all the text.

I always just mess around with this stuff until it works.

[RJK]

Are you using Word 2007 or later? If so, click on the MS Office button at the upper left of the screen. Click the "Word Options" button at the bottom of the form. Click the "Proofing" button in the list at the left of the form. Click the Grammar and Style "Settings" button. You will see a dropdown box to select 1 or 2 spaces between sentences. Select "2" and word will automatically insert two spaces after all end-of-sentence punctuation.

You should be aware, that most agents and publishing houses prefer a single space between sentences.

ETA: This will keep the two spaces at the end of a line together.

[Maryn]

If you choose to keep the two spaces, what you need to do is replace ordinary blank spaces with "hard spaces." Similar to a "hard hyphen," which is counted as a part of a complete word rather than a break where a line could wrap, a pair of hard spaces must stay together.

I'm running Word 2003, so if you're more modern, this may not be the way to do it, but I bet it's something close. You might copy and paste a single page with the blank space at the beginning of the line, for experimentation purposes, before trying this on your whole manuscript.

Use Find and Replace to find two blank spaces. Replace them with two of these: Ctrl+Shft+space

Maryn, who's done this before

[kurzon]

If you choose to keep the two spaces, what you need to do is replace ordinary blank spaces with "hard spaces." Similar to a "hard hyphen," which is counted as a part of a complete word rather than a break where a line could wrap, a pair of hard spaces must stay together.

This is a solution for keeping two words together, not for preventing spaces from visually appearing at the beginning of a line. I would not recommend it.

The simplest thing to do would be to select all the text (Ctrl-A) and copy it into a fresh blank document to see if that makes any difference.

[JohnnyGottaKeyboard]

Or you could open a blank document and cut & paste all the text.I tried this first cos it seemed the easiest, and it appears to have worked. When I pasted the text into the new document, I found that all through it the style type changed back and forth between several different levels. It was amazing, specially since there was no apparent esthetic difference.

I then selected everything and set it to normal and changed the font to the pub's preference, and somewhere in there the problem resolved itself. I did have to go in and change th chapter headings' format individually, but there were only about 25 of those.

Thanks everyone.You should be aware, that most agents and publishing houses prefer a single space between sentences.I have been told that. And about 5 years ago our official office style manual (at my day job) said that two spaces after a period were now optional. And I try--I really do--but it's muscle memory!