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: Inserting a Non-Breaking Space.
When Word calculates line width and wraps text to the next line, it tries to break the line at either a space or a hyphen. Sometimes, however, you may not want Word to break a line at a certain space. For instance, you may want to make sure that two adjacent words appear on the same line as each other.
The answer is to use non-breaking spaces instead of regular spaces when you don't want Word to break a line at a certain space. To do this, hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys as you press the Spacebar. Word will then not break the line at that point.
An alternative way of inserting a non-breaking space is to follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Special Characters tab of the Symbol dialog box.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13071) 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: Inserting a Non-Breaking Space.
Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!
Need to swap two adjacent paragraphs? Your editing arsenal can include a command to do this if you use the macro in this tip.
Discover MoreSome people like to have Word replace previous information as they type; this is called 'overtype mode.' You can control ...
Discover MoreWord has a feature that allows you to compare two documents side-by-side. What if you actually want to compare the ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2018-11-22 11:05:17
Karen Pierotti
The problem with using the symbol version is that American punctuation for ellipses has spaces between the periods. The symbol version is British although I believe newspapers use this to save space. Microsoft has some odd "normal" features, e.g. having an extra double space between paragraphs. The people coding for Word obviously don't know much about American punctuation.
2017-02-09 17:46:37
Michael Abegg
Hey, thanks. I knew about the keyboard shortcut but another application appropriated it, thanks for the reminder on how to do it from the menu.
2016-03-24 11:19:50
Nan
This is a great tip that I will use a lot. I often have right justified lines where I actually want a couple blank spaces before the right margin. Without this tip, that was impossible. Typing spaces just kept going out into the margin. I resorted to using underscores to hold the "empty" place at the end of the line. Ideal would be the ability to set an option for non-breaking spaces to be the default whenever there are, say 3 spaces together. (as one or 2 could just be a word or sentence break.) Thank you so much for this tip!
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2020 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
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: 
Comments