nonbreaking spaces before punctuation marks

[Puzzled]

Word is automatically inserting nonbreaking spaces before punctuation marks
when I type

a colon )
a semi-colon (
a question mark (?)
an exclamation point (!)

What can I do to eliminate this automated function so that when I type a
punctuation mark, that is all that Word types in my document?

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

[Tony Jollans]

Sounds like your language is set to French. This behaviour can be turned off
by unchecking the Autoformat (and AutoFormat As You Type) "Replace Straight
Quotes with Smart Quotes" option. But, more likely, you want to set your
language to English.

 

[Puzzled]

Danke schön, Tony! Your intuition was right on target -- I do indeed have
the problem when I am working with the French keyboard in Word 2003. (I
don't remember having the problem in my old Word 95, though.) Your
suggestion has resolved the problem -- partially . I unfortunately lose
the smart quotes function when I implement your suggestion, however.

Background: Actually, I often have to change between keyboard layouts in
several languages (most often French or English) and the French-language
style requirements (that I follow for my work) do not allow spaces before
punctuation, before and after quotation marks, etc. So the automated
function in Word 2003 putting spaces before punctuation, and before and after
quotation marks, is a real bother.

Further question: Is there any way to eliminate the unwanted spacing before
punctuation marks, while at the same time keeping the smart quotes feature
(rather than straight quotes)?

Again, danke, Tony, I really appreciate your help.

 

[Tony Jollans]

Sorry, but as far as I know (which isn't really very much) it comes with the
spaces and no choice.

Best I can think of is, if you don't use hard spaces for anything else, you
may be able to do a simple replace all hard space with nothing on your
finished document.

 

[Puzzled]

I suppose you are right about there being no choice, Tony (**sigh**). I
don't understand why the folks at Word programmed nonbreaking spaces before
punctuation marks into their program in such a way that it is beyond the
control of the end user. It is too bad; that lack of flexibility is probably
a weakness in Word 2003, it would seem.

As for doing a simple replace for all the hard spaces in my finished
document, your suggestion is confirming, because that is exactly what I have
been doing. I had hoped there was an easier, automatic way to accomplish the
task, but I suppose there is not. Perhaps someone else has a better
solution. Until then, I will just continue doing the replace of the hard
spaces as one of my last tasks when working on a document -- **grumble,
grumble** .

Again, thank you, and have a great weekend!

 

[Blue Hornet]

Sounds like your language is set to French. This behaviour can be turned off
by unchecking the Autoformat (and AutoFormat As You Type) "Replace Straight
Quotes with Smart Quotes" option. But, more likely, you want to set your
language to English.

This is a potential workaround; perhaps you can modify this to suit:
If you make an AutoCorrect entry for "semicolon" (symbol) and replace
it with itself then Word will make the substitution, and it won't
"appear" to be any different. (I know that seems nonsensical, but read
on...)

You'll still type ";" and get " ;", *but* you can backspace once, to
remove the space, then continue. (You don't have to re-position the
cursor, either, just type "semicolon" and "backspace" and your added
hard space is removed.) I don't know why it works, but it does. So
it's an extra keystroke with each punctuation mark entered that way (as
well as AutoCorrect entries for each of those symbols). I wouldn't
like it, either, but it is an option.

Maybe it's best just to write a macro to search for hard spaces before
punctuation marks and run that on DocumentSave or Print, etc. I agree
that it makes no sense that Microsoft wouldn't include a setup option
somewhere to make it behave as you want it to.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I think pressing Ctrl+Z to reverse the AutoFormat would probably be easier.