Lines Breaking between Double Spaces

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated September 29, 2018)

Kathleen's in-house style dictates that they use two spaces at the end of sentences. (She understands this is a hot topic for many people, nevertheless, it is their house style.) She's noticed that when a sentence ends near the right margin, Word will often break the end of the line between the two spaces after the sentence. So, they end up with one space at the end of the line and the other at the start of the next line. Kathleen wonders if there is any setting that will force Word to place all those spaces at the end of the line, as they should be.

If you notice this behavior with some of your documents, there is only one potential solution we've been able to come up with—you need to replace the two spaces with a non-breaking space followed by a regular space. As you are typing, you would enter the non-breaking space by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar. The space right after that should be a regular space.

If your document already has two regular spaces between sentences, you can use Find and Replace to search for instances of two spaces and replace them with the non-breaking space followed by a regular space.

This relatively simple fix should take care of the abnormal line breaking that you are noticing.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13565) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is two less than 7?

2018-10-01 17:14:15

Barb

I use the paragraph mark tool that shows by dots the number of spaces between words. Even when I call it to the attention of authors, they use the two spaces out of habit.

2018-09-30 01:06:56

David Cohen

I think the easier solution is to tell the house style enforcer to go jump in the lake.

2018-09-29 21:19:04

Phil Rabichow

In Word 2003, this wasn't a problem. Tools/Options/Compatibility & make sure "wrap trailing spaces to the next line" was unchecked. I haven't seen this happen in Word 2016.

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