Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Extra Space after Quotation Mark when Pasting.
Richard cuts and pastes quotations quite a bit. If he types a quotation mark and then pastes text right after the quotation mark, Word automatically puts a space between the quotation mark and the text he's pasting. Richard then has to go back and delete the added space. He wonders how he can stop this behavior in Word.
Actually, the behavior is "by design" in Word. It is part of what Microsoft refers to as "smart cut and paste." It means that Word tries to figure out whether it should add or subtract a space from things you are cutting or pasting. This can, for some people and some purposes, cause confusing results.
You can turn off smart cut and paste (and thereby stop Word from adding the unwanted space after the quotation mark) by following these steps:
Figure 1. The Advanced options of the Word Options dialog box.
If you prefer, you could leave the check box selected (in step 4) and simply modify what things smart cut and paste does for you. You do that by clicking on the Settings button at the right of the option.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8759) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Extra Space after Quotation Mark when Pasting.
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2020-06-19 19:26:24
Steve_K2
Same issue here, and just fixed (I hope).
This started fairly recently, and I don't remember making the change in Options. Ah, maybe I did.
Many thanks.
2016-07-01 14:14:56
GFRyno
Thanks ... I have been looking for some time to eliminate this very annoying feature.
2016-05-20 18:01:18
SFBranden
The "smart style behavior" setting is the one that you need to uncheck to stop this insane practice.
2016-04-28 05:46:33
Chris
Thank you. This has been driving me mad since I had 2013 installed. Every time I pasted something Word would insert a space in a different font type and size(?!?) next to a space that was already there. Today I got annoyed enough to look how to stop it. :-)
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
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