How to remove spaces between words. How to get rid of large spaces in Microsoft Word

Reasons for too large spaces between words in Word documents there may be several - this may be a consequence of the formatting commands used for the entire text or its individual blocks, or the use of special characters instead of regular spaces. Each of the reasons has its own own ways elimination, but if it is not possible to find out exactly the source of the defect in the text, you can sequentially apply all the means.

Instructions

Start figuring out possible reasons excessively large spaces between words, for example, by checking text formatting. If the text is set to align to the width of the document, then text editor makes sure that the first letters of the first words of each line are on the same vertical line, just like last letters the last words of the lines. To achieve this, the editor stretches the intervals between words in those lines where the number of characters is insufficient.

Highlight the problematic part of the text open document. If the spacing between words throughout the document needs correction, you can select it by pressing the hotkey combination CTRL + A (this is the Russian letter “F”). Once you've done this, click the left alignment command button - it's located on the Home tab in the Paragraph command group. You can replace clicking a button by pressing CTRL + L.

Check to see if tabs are used instead of spaces. To do this, enable the display of “non-printing characters” in the document - the corresponding button is located in the same group of “Paragraph” commands on the “Home” tab. Space characters will be indicated by raised dots above the baseline, and tab characters will be indicated by small arrows. If you find that these are the cause of the increased spaces, copy one of the tab characters and press CTRL + H to open the Find and Replace dialog.

Paste the copied space into the “Find” field, and enter a regular space into the “Replace with” field. Then click the "Replace All" button.

If, when the display of non-printable characters mode is turned on, it turns out that the reason for too large spacing is the presence of not one, but several spaces between words, then use the same search and replace dialog. Press the keyboard shortcut CTRL + H, put two spaces in the “Find” field, one space in the “Replace with” field, and then click the “Replace All” button. After that, press the same button again - in case there are not two spaces between the words, but more. Click the button until Word reports that the number of replacements completed is zero.

MS Word has quite a few large selection styles for document design, there are many fonts available various styles formatting and the ability to align text. Thanks to all these tools you can improve your quality appearance text. However, sometimes even so wide choice funds seem insufficient.

We have already written about how to align text in MS Word documents, increase or decrease indents, change line spacing, and in this article we will talk about how to create greater distances between words in Word, that is, roughly speaking, how to increase the length space. In addition, if necessary, you can also reduce the distance between words using a similar method.

The need to make the distance between words larger or smaller than what is done by the program by default does not arise very often. However, in cases where this still needs to be done (for example, to clearly highlight some fragment of text or, conversely, to move it to the “background”), not the most correct ideas come to mind.

So, to increase the distance, someone puts two or more spaces instead of one, someone uses the TAB key to indent, thereby creating a problem in the document that is not so easy to get rid of. If we talk about reduced spaces, suitable solution doesn't even come close.

The size (value) of the space, which indicates the distance between words, is standard, and it increases or decreases only with changing the font size up or down, respectively.

However, few people know that MS Word has a long (double) space character, a short space character, as well as a quarter space character (¼), which can be used to increase or decrease the distance between words. They are located in the “Special Signs” section, which we previously wrote about.

So, the only correct decision that can be made if it is necessary to increase or decrease the distance between words is to replace regular spaces with long or short spaces, as well as ¼ space. We will tell you how to do this below.

Add a long or short space

1. Click on an empty space (preferably an empty line) in the document to place the cursor there.

2. Open a tab "Insert" and in the menu buttons "Symbol" select item “Other symbols”.

3. Go to the tab “Special signs” and find there “Long space”, “Short Space” or “¼ space”, depending on what you need to add to the document.

4. Click on this special symbol and press the button "Insert".

5. A long (short or quarter) space will be inserted into an empty space in the document. Close the window "Symbol".

Replace regular spaces with double spaces

As you probably understand, manually replacing all regular spaces with long or short spaces in the text or a separate fragment of it does not make the slightest sense. Fortunately, instead of the lengthy “copy-paste” process, this can be done using the “Replace” tool, which we previously wrote about.

1. Select the added long (short) space with the mouse and copy it ( CTRL+C). Make sure you copied one character and that there were no spaces or indents previously on that line.

2. Select all text in the document ( CTRL+A) or use the mouse to select a piece of text in which standard spaces need to be replaced with long or short ones.

3. Click the button "Replace", which is located in the group "Editing" in the tab “Home”.

4. In the dialog box that opens “Find and Replace” in line "Find" put a regular space, and in the line “Replace with” paste the previously copied space ( CTRL+V), which was added from the window "Symbol".

5. Click on the button “Replace all”, then wait for a message about the number of replacements completed.

6. Close the notification, close the dialog box “Find and Replace”. All normal spaces in the text or selection you made will be replaced with large or small spaces, depending on what you needed to do. If necessary, repeat the above steps for another piece of text.

Note: Visually, with an average font size (11, 12), short spaces and even ¼-spaces are almost impossible to distinguish from standard spaces that are set using a key on the keyboard.

We could have finished here already, if not for one “but”: in addition to increasing or decreasing the spacing between words in Word, you can also change the distance between letters, making it smaller or larger compared to the default values. How to do this? Just follow these steps:

1. Select a piece of text in which you need to increase or decrease the space between letters in words.

2. Open the group dialog box "Font" by clicking on the arrow in the lower right corner of the group. You can also use the keys “CTRL+D”.

3. Go to the tab "Additionally".

4. In the section “Character spacing” in the menu item "Interval" select “Sparse” or “Compacted”(increased or decreased, respectively), and in the line on the right ( “On”) set the required value for indents between letters.

5. Once you have set the required values, click "OK" to close the window "Font".

6. The spacing between letters will change, which, paired with long spaces between words, will look quite appropriate.

But in the case of reducing the indents between words (the second paragraph of text in the screenshot), everything did not look the best, the text turned out to be unreadable and merged, so I had to increase the font from 12 to 16.

That's all, from this article you learned how to change the distance between words in a MS Word document. Good luck in exploring other features of this multifunctional program, detailed instructions work with which we will delight you in the future.

It often happens that after formatting the text, your spaces move out and appear several times in a row. It will no longer be possible to submit such a document for work or study, since it is inconvenient to read and has a completely incorrect appearance. There are two ways to fix this, depending on how many spaces need to be removed or replaced. Try both options and choose the best one for yourself.

How to remove one multiple space in Word

Program Microsoft Office Word has its own hotkeys, which are much more convenient to use than constantly clicking the mouse and taking up a lot of time. In this example you will try to use them. Open your file in Word.

Immediately place the cursor on the place where there is an unwanted multiple space.

Now select the entire space by placing the cursor at the beginning of it while holding down left button mouse, and then dragging it to the end.

On your keyboard, hold down the combination “CTRL + SHIFT + Space” at the same time.

Now look what you got.

The multiple space has been removed and replaced with a regular space character. This method is very fast and ideal for single cases in your document. If you notice several such gaps in the Word file, and manually removing them will be too time-consuming, then use the second method.

How to remove all multiple spaces in a Word document

After formatting text or copying it from third-party resources, you may encounter multiple spaces on each line. In this case, the first method of the article will not suit you. Try the following option:

Open your Word file.

Determine for yourself whether there are many errors with spaces in it. If you do not correct them manually, then look in the “Home” tab for the “Replace” link in the upper right corner.

Click on it. The “Find and Replace” window will open in front of you.

The essence of the window is as follows: in the top line “Find” you need to enter your multiple spaces, if there are three of them, then enter three, if there are two, then two, respectively. In the bottom line “Replace” you need to write what we are replacing the upper characters with. In our case, this is one space, so put it in this field.
Click on the “Replace All” button.

Within a few seconds, the program will replace and search for the required characters. Wait and then pay attention to the screen. There will be a large notice on it indicating how many inserts have been replaced. In the screenshot below you can see that twenty-five of them were produced.

Now press the “Ok” key and see what happened to your text.

All spaces lined up and there were one at a time. If you remember the hotkey combination “CTRL + H”, then you will no longer have to look for the “Replace” field in the program header. With this combination you will simply open the “Replace and Paste” window immediately and continue working starting from the replacement point.

Every time you write a document in Microsoft Office Word, immediately think about how you will format the text. If you immediately set the desired formatting, you will free yourself from further lengthy correction of mistakes made when rearranging text from one page layout to another. This can also be affected by further changes in the width of the page edge and its paragraphs.

To further reinforce the material, watch the video lesson below:

When working with text information, you've probably had to deal with the difficulties of formatting text borrowed from other sources. And in order to bring it to a common style, it is necessary to get rid of the undesirable format. I have already written about how to correctly save text from various sources, for example, in an article about or. But sometimes clearing the formatting does not give the desired result, since the text may contain non-printable characters: spaces, hyphens, tabs, end of paragraph, breaks, non-breaking space in Word and others. These could be the reason why the text is not aligned, or each line starts as a paragraph, or the text takes up part of the page and jumps to the next.

We turn on the mode for displaying paragraph marks and others hidden characters formatting button (PI sign) ¶ on the tab Home in section Paragraph(Ctrl+Shift+8 or ALT+I+8)

To make it easier to understand, let's analyze the text in the mode of displaying non-printable characters and look at how to remove a non-breaking space in Word using an example.

Removing a non-breaking space

We turn on the hidden character mode by pressing the key combination Ctrl+Shift+8 or on the Home tab in the Paragraph section, click a button similar to the PI sign.

In the figure, non-breaking spaces are underlined with a red line; they are indicated by empty circles. You can delete such a character by highlighting it and pressing the regular spacebar on the keyboard. In a short document, this operation is easy to do, but if the text is voluminous, then automation is necessary.

Non-breaking space - a special sign that prohibits the transfer of a character or word immediately after it, without the previous word. Set by key combination Ctrl+Shift+Space

Let's replace non-breaking spaces throughout the text. Using hotkeys Ctrl+H or tab Home in the editing section press the command Replace.

Now in the window that opens, you just need to indicate what to replace and with what. But the problem is that a non-breaking space is a non-printing character and you won’t be able to specify it for searching as a simple character. What to do?

Press the button More and get additional functionality. Now click on the field Find so that the text cursor blinks exactly there. Click the button at the bottom of the window Special and choose Non-breaking space.

Now in the field Find a combination of characters corresponding to a non-breaking space will be inserted. Let's move on to the field Replace and press the key once Space. All initial data is specified, we proceed to replacement by pressing a button Replace all.

If all of the above was done correctly, you will see a message like this.

As you can see, friends, this technique can also be used when replacing other non-printable characters. I hope you find this information useful.

Table of non-printing characters for the Find field

Dear reader! You have watched the article to the end.
Have you received an answer to your question? Write a few words in the comments.
If you haven't found the answer, indicate what you were looking for.

In most cases, working in Word does not raise any questions for the user. And what questions can there be if the program is, in general, simple, with a clear and accessible interface. However, no one is immune from failure, and sometimes incomprehensible situations still arise. At the same time, sometimes an experienced Word user cannot cope with them, so what can we say about beginners.

So, a common problem that “stops” work is the formation of a large gap. Surely you are also familiar with the situation when, when you align text between words, you end up with a huge space that in no way brightens up the document. Of course, when printed, this gap does not disappear anywhere, and aesthetically your text does not look very good, to put it mildly. However, this scourge can be overcome, and this material I'll tell you how to remove large spaces in Word.

Method one

As usual, there will be several options for solving the problem, and I will start with the simpler one, in my opinion. To remove the huge space between words that appears out of nowhere, do the following. First, delete it, for example, or use the button. Now you need to simultaneously press three keys on the keyboard, namely: ++spacebar. After you do this, a normal one will appear in place of the huge gap, just as it should be.

Method two

Most often, such double spaces occur when text is aligned to the width of the sheet. If this point is not important for you, it is better to select left text alignment, which will avoid similar situation in the future.

Well, from theory to practice: what should you do if there is already a huge gap in your text that spoils the aesthetic appearance of the document? Let’s use, which is located in the “Home” tab, in the “Editing” subcategory. There is a “Replace” button, click on it.

After clicking on it, a window with two empty fields. It’s easy to guess that in the “Find” field you must enter two spaces in a row, and in the “Replace with” field - one space. Now, when, after aligning the text, two spaces are formed between words in the text, the text editor will automatically correct them to one.

As it turned out, that big gap not as scary as it seemed before, right? As you can see, the problem can be solved easily and does not require special knowledge and skills from the user.