Lines Breaking between Double Spaces

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 24, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365

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...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Continuing Macro Lines

Program a macro, and you can easily find that some lines get very long. If you want to shorten the lines so they are more ...

Discover More

Removing a Directory

Your macro, in the course of doing some processing, may create a directory that you later need to delete. Here's how to ...

Discover More

Creating a Printer Pool

If you work in an office with many users, your system may have access to a group of printers. Here's how you can set up ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! Are you ready to harness the full power of Word 2013 to create professional documents? In this comprehensive guide you'll learn the skills and techniques for efficiently building the documents you need for your professional and your personal life. Check out Word 2013 In Depth today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Making Highlighting Disappear when Typing

Select a highlighted word or phrase and start typing, and Word maintains the highlighting on what you enter. If this ...

Discover More

Highlighting Duplicate Words

One way to help improve your writing is to minimize the number of duplicated words you use in your prose. Depending on ...

Discover More

Finding an Unknown Character

Sometimes, the characters that appear in a document can be hard to figure out, especially if the document came from ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is two more 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.

This Site

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.