Wrapping Spaces

Let's face it: some people like one space at the end of a sentence, and other people like two. (And some one-space people love to bash two-space people, and vice-versa—but that's another story.) Fortunately, Word is not a program that enforces a single space after sentences when you may want to use two. On the other hand, if the end of your sentence falls at the end of a line, one of your spaces may stay on the first line, and the second space may wrap to the second line. This can mess up the appearance of your page.

The first thing to do is to ensure that the extra space is really wrapping to the next line. If you have non-printing characters turned off (so they are not visible), it is very easy to mess up the formatting of a document. For instance, you may think you have two spaces at the end of a line, but you really have a single space, followed by a hard return, and then the new line starts out with a space. To check for this, just click on the Show/Hide tool on the toolbar (it looks like a backwards P) or, in Word 2007, on the Home tab of the ribbon and see if a hard return is at the end of the line.

If there are no formatting problems, then you could obviously delete the extra space. However, there is one compatibility setting that could be causing a problem. Follow these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu.
2. Make sure the Compatibility tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Scroll to the end of the list of options.
4. Make sure the Wrap Trailing Spaces to Next Line option is not selected.
5. Click on OK.

If you are using Word 2007 then follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options. Word displays the Word Options dialog box.
2. Click Advanced at the left of the dialog box.
3. Scroll to the every end of the options in the dialog box.
4. Click the plus sign to the left of Layout Options. Word shows a long list of compatibility options it can use.
5. Scroll to the end of the list of options.
6. Make sure the Wrap Trailing Spaces to Next Line option is not selected.
7. Click on OK.

In normal operations with Word, this setting should not become set. However, some users have noticed that it can become set when importing documents from another Word processor, such as WordPerfect. In either case, make sure the option is cleared, and the problem of the wrapping spaces should go away.