MS Word: Normal Vs No Spaces

JohnLine · Oct 27, 2019

I'm still using word 2011 for most of my writing. It's fine, but there is one nagging issue. Whenever I cut and paste from it, it removes the spacing between the paragraphs so that,

"How about some coffee?" asked Joe.

Marie stared at the starling that had just landed in his hair.

Becomes:

"How about some coffee?" asked Joe.
Marie stared at the starling that had just landed in his hair.

At some point, I always have to go through my writing and switch from "normal" to "no spaces," and then add the paragraph breaks in manually, but Word REALLY DOESN'T LIKE IT. It will even go so far as to hide the "no spaces" option from me every ten minutes or so, and forces me to set it back up on the menu to get it to reappear on the top bar.

Does anyone know of a more auto-magic way to deal with this? If you've dealt with this, what are some tricks you've used?

rgroberts · Oct 27, 2019

You need to change the "normal" style for it to stick; otherwise, Word loves to go back to it. "Normal" has spacing added in after paragraphs, as you've discovered. If you want it to change, I'd change the style itself, otherwise it keeps coming back to get you.

To do that, click on the first option in the Styles menu. Does Word 2011 have the ribbon? I can't remember. If so, it's on the "Home" part of the ribbon. Once you find the style labeled as normal, change it to what you want. That should stop Word from changing it back.

dpaterso · Oct 30, 2019

From your 2nd example, it doesn't look as if you've lost paragraph breaks?

It looks like you've gone from double spacing to single spacing, when you paste your text.

If you hit Ctrl-A to highlight everything (or just select/highlight the specific lines you want to work with) and then hit Ctrl-2 to apply double spacing, does that do anything?

Maybe not, maybe I'm misunderstanding.

-Derek

AW Admin · Oct 30, 2019

When you refer to cutting and pasting, where are you pasting the text you cut? From MS Word to MS Word?

Al X. · Oct 30, 2019

I don't seem to have that issue, but I use 'no spaces' as my default style. You might try 'keep text only' as your paste option.

BTW I have also found that if you copy foreign text and paste it in to your document, e.g. so that upside down question marks and accents are preserved, Word will go so far as to even change the language of your document for spelling and autocorrect purposes unless you paste as 'keep text only.'

JohnLine · Oct 30, 2019

AW Admin said:
When you refer to cutting and pasting, where are you pasting the text you cut? From MS Word to MS Word?

Usually, I'm pasting from Word to either my text to speech program, "NaturalReader" or to various text entry boxes I use to share my work online, try cutting from Word and pasting to this forum to see an example of what happens.

The problem is that in a "Normal Style" Word interrepts a paragraph break as two carriage returns(or line feeds) while everything else sees it as one. Recently, I've been working around this issue by doing a replace-all on "^p" and replacing it with "^p^p" before I copy the text, and then undoing the replace-all after I paste the text to another program. This works well, and keeps me from having to go through paragraph by paragraph.

I guess what I'm really asking is how do people deal with losing Word's formatting when text is pasted into other programs?

JohnLine · Oct 30, 2019

Al X. said:
I don't seem to have that issue, but I use 'no spaces' as my default style. You might try 'keep text only' as your paste option.

My problem is that if I use "no spaces" I've locked myself into a having spaces between paragraphs, were most fiction submissions require indent (on all but the first paragraph) and no spaces between paragraphs. But I like to write in block formatting, and publish that way to most electronic platforms. (except to eReaders with limited screen space.)

I want to use as little baked-in formatting as possible so it's easy to change later.

I will look into the "keep text only" option, thank you for the suggestion.

Paul Lamb · Oct 30, 2019

I noticed this happen when one of my stories was published online recently and the paragraph spacing in one section was like that. Perhaps that is what happened.

AW Admin · Oct 30, 2019

JohnLine said:
I guess what I'm really asking is how do people deal with losing Word's formatting when text is pasted into other programs?

Try copying and pasting from MS Word to Notepad; then copying it from Notepad to where ever you want the text.
For help with copying and pasting to this Forum see: Formatting Help

JohnLine · Oct 30, 2019

AW Admin said:
Try copying and pasting from MS Word to Notepad; then copying it from Notepad to where ever you want the text.
For help with copying and pasting to this Forum see: Formatting Help

Thanks! I think I have a good handle on things now. Knowing ^p can be substituted for paragraph breaks in Word, makes a world of difference.

Al X. · Oct 31, 2019

JohnLine said:
My problem is that if I use "no spaces" I've locked myself into a having spaces between paragraphs, were most fiction submissions require indent (on all but the first paragraph) and no spaces between paragraphs. But I like to write in block formatting, and publish that way to most electronic platforms. (except to eReaders with limited screen space.)

I want to use as little baked-in formatting as possible so it's easy to change later.

I will look into the "keep text only" option, thank you for the suggestion.

It depends on what platform you use. For Amazon KDP/Kindle, my scene breaks (space between paragraphs) are preserved as-is. D2D however has some wonky formatting issues, and if I wish to have scene breaks preserved, I have to globally replace two paragraph symbols with three, otherwise they all run together.

MS Word: Normal Vs No Spaces

JohnLine

Owns a pen.

rgroberts

dpaterso

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AW Admin

Al X.

JohnLine

Owns a pen.

JohnLine

Owns a pen.

Paul Lamb

AW Admin

JohnLine

Owns a pen.

Al X.