Fixing large spaces between words in word. How to remove large spaces in Word: tips. Removing special characters and tabs

Don’t know how to use Word or have forgotten how to find any important function for editing text? If so, this article will definitely interest you.

During time, people often face the problem of large gaps. Below we will tell you how to correctly perform width alignment in Word, and how to use various functions in this program. So, after reading this short course, you will be able to successfully perform all the work you need to do.

First, let's define what such an expression as “width alignment” actually means. This is how your finished text will appear on the page. Indeed, in addition to width alignment, there are three more types of its distribution:

• on the left edge;
• in the center;
• on the right edge.

And each of them has its own algorithm of actions.

How can I align text in width?

So, in order for you to successfully complete the width alignment process, you need to do the following:

1. Click anywhere in the paragraph of your text that you need to align.
2. Now find the “Home” tab at the top of the Word page. It has five subgroups ("Clipboard", "Font", "Paragraph", "Styles", "Editing"), among which you need to pay attention to the "Paragraph" group.
3. After going to this group, find the “Width” button in it and immediately click.
4. Your text is now aligned.

How not to align text

You don't need to use the keyboard's Spacebar or Tab buttons to align. Since this will take you a lot of time, and the main width of the text will be either larger or smaller.

How to remove spaces after alignment

It should be noted that once you finish the job of aligning the text to the width, your concern will not end there, since you may well end up with large spaces between words. But this problem is also extremely easy to fix. Below we offer you several methods that will help answer the question - how to remove spaces when aligning by width.

Reasons for large spaces in text

Before moving on to eliminating large gaps, it would be wise to determine the reason for their occurrence, since each of them has its own individual way of solving it.

There are several reasons for this problem:

1. Large spaces can occur due to the use of various commands when performing line alignment.
2. They appear due to use special characters instead of spaces.
3. Formatting text or some parts of it after justification can also cause this problem.
4. If you typed the “End of Line” character and then pressed the ENTER+SHIFT keys, you will automatically move to the next line of your text, after which large spaces will form.

Tricks for closing large gaps

If you are unable to determine what exactly is the origin of these largest gaps, then simply follow all the elimination techniques suggested below. And remember the above reasons for the future, so as not to accidentally leave a large gap in the text.

Removing Large Spaces

The first way to solve this problem is that you simply need to remove the large spacebar and put a normal one in its place; to do this, you need to simultaneously press three buttons on the keyboard of your computer: SHIFT + CTRL + SPACEBAR.

Hyphenation

In order to get rid of large spaces in the entire text at once, you need to:

• select it completely;
• after that, go to the “Page Layout” tab;
• There, find the “Hyphenation” tab and click “Auto”.

After this the problem will be solved.

Tabulation

Find out if tabs were used instead of spaces. To do this, you need to enable the display of “non-printing characters” in the text. To perform this action you must do the following:

• go to the “Home” tab;
• in the “Paragraph” group, click the “Non-printable characters” button (¶).

After completing the steps presented, all non-printing characters will be displayed in the text, and you will be able to find out whether tabs are causing the problem.

If so, then you just need to copy one of them and press CTRL+F, after which you will have a replacement window. In the first field of this window, insert text with a large space, and in the second - the text created by pressing three buttons on your keyboard SHIFT + CTRL + SPACEBAR. After that, you need to click on the “Find and Replace” button.

After completing all of the above steps, the replacement will be made and large gaps in the document will disappear.

Inter-sign intervals

If the cause of large spaces is inter-character spacing, then you should do the following:

• in the top menu, find the “File” tab;
• then follow it;
• in the menu that opens, select the “Settings” tab;
• after that, you will see a table with parameters, and you will need to select the “Advanced” item, and in it check the “Do not expand character spacing in a line with a break.”

Conclusion

After reading this article, you learned how to correctly perform width alignment in Word. Now, when you need to perform the named action when editing your text, you can solve all the problems yourself. Also, now you can identify all the causes of the so-called large gaps and eliminate them yourself.

Neatly formatted and laid out text looks smooth primarily due to the fact that the distance between words is approximately the same. It is through this that the balance of “white and black” in the document is achieved. However, when text is justified, it often creates such large spaces between words that it looks “leaky.” Voids can be noticeable to the eye, and often the width of the gap in Word is so large that it interferes not only with aesthetic perception, but also with reading.

Possible causes of large gaps

This usually happens because Word uses spaces as a margin for line alignment.

There are other reasons too. For example, there may be not one, but two or more spaces between words.

How to deal with this? How to remove large spaces in Word? There are several ways to do this. Spaces between words in Word can be aligned and the text made more neat, and for this you need to know the reason for the appearance of “gaps”.

Hyphenation

The first way to remove large spaces in Word is to hyphenate. The program may distribute words inaccurately, leaving long spaces between them, due to the fact that this is the only way for it to align the line. So we need to let her regulate

If your text does not have automatic hyphenation, activate this feature. To do this you need to do the following. Go to the "Page Layout" tab. In it you need to find the “Hyphenation” button. (It's under Page Setup.) Click on it. Check the box next to “Auto”.

The program will hyphenate, the length of words will be adjusted, and large spaces will disappear.

Extra spaces

As already mentioned, large gaps in the text of Word can arise due to the fact that some of them are simply superfluous. To make sure of this, activate the “Display all characters” function. To do this, you can press the Ctrl and * keys. Space characters will appear as dots between words in the vertical center of the line. If they really are repeated, double spaces need to be removed.

For these purposes, use the search and replace function.

Press the Ctrl and F keys. In the window that appears, select the “Replace” tab. In the Find What field, type two spaces. There is one in the “Replace” line. This way you can remove all double spaces automatically. Next, click the “Replace All” button. The program will issue a report on the number of operations performed. However, that's not all. After all, initially the text may contain not only double, but also triple, etc. spaces. Click “Replace All” again and wait for the program to report. Repeat the procedure until the program tells you that it has made 0 replacements.

Double spaces have been removed from the text.

Reducing whitespace in professional layout

A text editor, in principle, is not entirely intended for professional layout, but sometimes it is necessary for the text to look neat, and using a special application is either redundant, irrational, or simply inaccessible.

In this case, a logical question arises about how to remove large spaces in Word. After all, for professional layout it is not enough that the text is neatly formatted. It is necessary, for example, to compress a paragraph so that it disappears last line in the form of one small word.

In this and many other cases, you can artificially reduce the amount of space. This requires the search function and the Font window options.

Select the text (for example, a paragraph) in which you want to reduce white space. Call up the search window. In the Find What field, type a space. Click the "Find in" button and select "Current fragment" from the drop-down list. All spaces in your paragraph will be highlighted.

Open the “Font” window (Ctrl and D), select the “Spacing” tab and in the field of the same name select the “Condensed” option. It is recommended to reduce the gap value to no more than -0.4 (ideally - to -0.2). Click OK. All previously selected characters will be condensed, and the text will occupy less space. The amount of spaces has been reduced.

Thus, there are at least three ways to remove large spaces in Word. An alternative to all of them can sometimes be left or right alignment, but only if it is appropriate from the point of view of the aesthetics and graphics of the text.

After downloading another Word document from the Internet or when entering text yourself, you may find that the spaces between words are quite wide. Sometimes this distance is so large that it simply hurts the eye. This problem is not uncommon, and there are enough ways to solve it.

In our article we will present four the simplest option. We'll talk about how to remove space between words in Word using left alignment, using a non-breaking space, and eliminating non-printing characters such as "End of line" and tabs. Read the article to the end to determine the method that is right for you. We will consider how to remove spaces between words in Word 2010, but it is likely that all methods may be suitable for other versions of the program.

Using a non-breaking space

To do this, first open the corresponding window by pressing CTRL+H. You will see two fields: “Find” and “Replace”. As you might guess, you need to enter a tab character in the “Find” field. This can be done by copying. Well, put a regular space in the second field. Next, click “Replace All”, and all large spaces from the text will disappear.

Sometimes as a result of unsuccessful application of formatting commands or after converting texts from one standard to another intervals between words become too large or uneven. This defect significantly spoils the overall impression of the text document and needs to be corrected. This can be done using the capabilities of the word processor itself.

Instructions

If the interval between words If you want to remove it in the most radical way, that is, reduce it to zero, this means it is necessary to remove from the text the signs that separate words - spaces. You can do this using the Find and Replace dialog. Typically, the hotkey combination ctrl + r or ctrl + h is used to call this dialog box. Enter a space in the Find What field and leave the Replace With field blank. After that, click the "Replace All" button and the text editor will destroy intervals between words.

If intervals are not the same size, the reason may be that the “fit to width” formatting command was applied to the text. This means that the text editor moves the words on the line so that the rightmost position is occupied by the last letter of the last word. To do this he has to increase intervals between some words. To undo this alignment in the Microsoft Word word processor, first press the keyboard shortcut ctrl + a, and then ctrl + l.

Sometimes, as a result of converting a document from one format to another (for example, text copied in a browser window is pasted into a Word document window), the gaps between words Some text fragments are filled with tabs instead of spaces. Such intervals look excessively large and uneven. To bring the spacing back to normal, replace the tab characters with spaces. You can do this, for example, like this: first type one tab character, select it and cut it (ctrl + x). Then open the Find and Replace dialog (ctrl + r or ctrl + h), paste the contents of the clipboard (tab) into the Find field, and enter a space in the Replace With field. Then click the "Replace All" button.

One way to solve the problem of removing extra spaces between words or before punctuation marks can be the creation of macros, implemented standard means Microsoft applications Word, and allows you to automate the solution of the problem.

Instructions

Click the "Start" button to open the main menu of the system and go to "All Programs" to perform the operation of removing extra spaces between words.

Select Miicrosoft Office and launch the Word application.

Open the document to be edited and expand the “Tools” menu in the top toolbar of the program window.

Select the “Macro” item and use the “Start Recording” command in the directory that opens.

Enter the desired name in the Macro Name field in the new dialog box and click the hammer icon to add a special button to the toolbar, or select the keyboard icon button to control the macro using keys.

Go to the "Commands" tab of the dialog box that opens and drag the created macro from the right area of ​​the window to the toolbar.

Finish work open window and press Ctrl+H simultaneously to bring up the Find and Replace dialog box.

Expand the window by clicking the "More" button to gain access to manage search characteristics and clear the contents of the "Find" and "Replace with" fields.

Click the "Remove Formatting" button if it is active and apply the checkbox to the "Wildcards" field in the "Search Options" section.

Make sure all other fields in the Search Options section are unchecked and select Everywhere from the drop-down list.

Press Ctrl+A simultaneously to select all text in the document and enter the value “space(2-)” in the “Find” field.

Enter the value "space" in the "Replace with" field and click the "Replace All" button. This action will replace all double spaces in the document text with single ones and thus remove s between words.

Quit the open window and deselect text by pressing the arrow key.

Click the Stop button in the control panel to stop the macro recording process.

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Large spaces in the text can occur for various reasons, for example, due to incorrect formatting or the use of special characters. Moreover, the spacing between words in Word can be different both throughout the text and in its individual parts. There are a number of possibilities to correct the situation in Word.

Checking text formatting

The text can have text justification active. In this case, the editor automatically sets spaces between words. Justification means that all the first and last letters on each line should be located on the same vertical line. This is impossible to do with equal spaces, so the editor increases the spacing between words. Most often, text in this format is not very well perceived visually.

Align text left

Using this function, the text becomes less visually attractive, but all spaces that are set are immediately the same size. Follow these steps:

• Select the text where the spaces are not equal (if this is the entire document, then select it with the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+A”);
• Then, in the “Paragraph” section of the Control Panel, on the “Home” tab, click “Align Left” or use the “Ctrl+L” hotkey.

Removing tabs and special characters

It is possible that non-standard spacing was caused by the use of tab characters (Tab key). To check this, enable the "non-printing characters" feature. You can also enable it in the “Paragraph” section. By pressing the button, you will see small dots appear in place of all the spaces. If your text contains tabs, a small arrow will appear at those locations. One or two spaces can be removed by simply pressing the “BackSpace” key. If there are a lot of tab characters, it is better to do it differently:

• Copy any tab character;
• Activate the “Find and Replace” function by pressing the “Ctrl+H” hotkeys;
• In the window that opens, on the “Replace” tab, in the “Find” line, insert this character (or press “Ctrl+H”);
• In the “Replace with...” line, enter one space;
• Click the "Replace All" button.

All tabs in the text will automatically be replaced by a single space.

If, after activating the non-printing character mode, you see that the reason for large spacing in the text is a large number of spaces, use the same Find and Replace function. First, enter two spaces in the “Find” field and perform a search. Then three, and so on, until the number of replacements completed is zero.

Formatted files

DOC and DOCX files can use advanced editing. Open the file in Word and make the required settings. For example, instead of a single space, you can set a double space. You can also use special characters, such as long space/short space, 1/4 space. To insert such characters throughout the document, use the same hot keys to open the Find and Replace window. By default, there are no special characters there, so you first need to insert such a character into the text, copy it from there and then paste it in the search and replace window. Where can I get the space pattern? For this:

• Open the “Insert” tab on the “Control Panel”;
• Click "Symbol", then "Other";
• Go to the "Special Characters" section and find there the right sign space;
• Paste it into the text.

The resulting sample can be immediately cut by pressing the key combination “Ctrl+X”. It can then be pasted into the desired field.

Working with html code

If you need to change spacing not in Word, but in a web document, this operation is even easier. There is a special function in the code called word-spacing. With its help, you can set a certain interval for the entire document. To do this, you need to insert the following between the head tags:

Instead of 30px, you can set any other pixel value.

How to change letter spacing

While working with Word, you may also need to change the spacing between letters. This can be useful if you need to somehow highlight a specific piece of text. Such intervals can be sparse or dense.

Changing spacing in Word 2003

To set a different letter spacing, follow these steps:

• Go to the “Format” section and click “Font” (or the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+D”;
• Open the "Interval" menu;
• Press "Enter".

Changing spacing in Word 2007

Use next algorithm actions:

• Go to the “Home” menu, then to the “Font” section;
• Open the “Interval” tab;
• Check the box “Sparse” or “Dense” and enter the required digital value;
• Press "Enter".

If you need a similar function constantly, you can set hotkeys for sparse and compact intervals.

• Open the “Tools” menu and go to the “Settings” window;
• Go to the “Keyboard” section;
• In the “Categories” item, click the “Format” line, and in the “Commands” item - the “Condensed” (for compacted intervals) or “Expanded” (for sparse intervals) line;
• Specify keyboard shortcuts by pressing them on your keyboard.

• Open the "Options" menu and go to the "Settings" window;
• Click "Categories" and select "All Teams";
• In the “Commands” item, select the “Condensed” or “Expanded” line and specify a key combination for them.

Even if you opened text file and saw complete chaos, putting everything in order will not be difficult. By performing all the described steps in turn, you can remove unnecessary intervals. And you can apply the acquired knowledge in the future.

When typing text in Word, you often encounter a situation where the editor independently sets too large gaps between words. Attempts to correct the situation using keys "Backspace" or "Delete" turn out to be unsuccessful. Words stick together, and when a space is inserted, a gap is formed again. The appearance of the document leaves much to be desired. Meanwhile, solving this problem is not at all difficult.

Ways to remove breaks between words in Word

There are several reasons why large gaps between words occur when working in Word. Accordingly, there are also several ways to solve the problem.

Method 1: Align text

The first thing you need to pay attention to is the text alignment options. To do this, in the tab "Home" Word menu, in the block "Paragraph" You should check to see if it is set to fit the page width. If so, you need to change it to left aligned.

The same can be done simply by using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+L.

Method 2: Hotkeys

You can also remove extra spaces between words in Word using hotkeys. To do this you need:

The disadvantage of this method is that it cannot be applied to the entire document at once. Therefore, if there are a lot of extra spaces between words, there is no point in using it.

Method 3: AutoCorrect

Using AutoCorrect is optimal solution in case the text is replete with large gaps between words. The advantage is that it can be applied to the entire document. To set up autocorrect you need to:

After this, all double spaces in the text will be replaced with single spaces, and a corresponding message will be displayed. But since breaks in the text may contain more than two spaces, the operation must be repeated until the message about the number of replacements completed shows 0.

Method 4: Removing hidden characters

Often, large gaps in text can be caused by hidden formatting characters. In this case, replacing double spaces with single spaces will not help. By default, hidden characters are not shown, but you can change this mode by clicking on the Greek letter icon "Pi" in the block "Paragraph" main tab of the document menu.

As a result, the text will look like this:

If there are too many hidden characters, they can also be removed using autocorrect. But it is configured a little differently:

Once selected, the special character will be inserted into the top field of the AutoCorrect menu and you can replace it with a regular space. The entire subsequent algorithm of actions is similar to that described in "Method 3";

Before reducing spaces between words in the text, you need to find out the reason why they occurred. There may be several of them:

• align text width;
• extra spaces;
• tabs between words or long spaces.

All these problems can arise, for example, due to copying text from the Internet. To bring the text into proper form, it is necessary to get rid of all the above reasons in order.

A common reason for large spaces between words is the alignment of text. With this alignment, words are evenly distributed along the entire length of the line by increasing the distance between them.

To change this, you need to do the following:

If the text formatting requirements indicate that width alignment is necessary, then the easiest way to reduce spaces is to set automatic word hyphens.

To do this you need:

If both methods fail, then the problem was not with the text alignment. Perhaps it's a matter of extra spaces.

Extra spaces

You can remove extra spaces in the text manually, which will take a lot of time, or use the following algorithm:

In this moment appearance The documents should already be improved. If there is still extra space between words, then perhaps there are special characters in the text that need to be removed.

Tab characters

Sometimes there may be tabs between words instead of spaces. To detect it, you need:

1. On the “Home” tab, go to the “Paragraph” section and click on the “Paragraph” sign; when you click it, all hidden characters are displayed. The tab will appear as a small arrow.

   

2. Next, you need to perform the same sequence of actions as when replacing double space to single. To do this, in the “Home” tab, in the “Editing” section, click “Replace”.

   

3. In the window that appears, insert a tab character in the “Find” field. To do this, click “More”.

   

4. Then - “Special”.

   

5. Select “Tab character” from the drop-down menu.

   

6. In the “Replace with” field, put one space.

   

7. Click "Replace All".

   

Special symbols

Between words, sometimes instead of a regular space there may be a long space or a non-breaking space. If you click show hidden characters, they will appear in the text as a circle instead of a dot.

To replace long spaces with regular or short spaces, you need:

Important! You can replace the regular space, which is placed using the keyboard, with a short space or ¼ space. But with a standard font size (12 pt), the difference will not be very noticeable.

Sometimes it happens that after typing, several lines remain on the last page of a section, which is contrary to the rules of layout. According to standards, the sheet must be filled at least 1/3.

To fix this, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Select the last paragraph of a section, or better yet, the entire section. In the second case, the changes will not be so noticeable.

   

2. Click right button mouse and select “Font”.

   

3. In the window that opens, go to the “Interval” tab.

   

4. Select “Compacted”, and in the value field enter the minimum value of 0.1 pt.

   



5. If there is still text on the sheet, you need to increase the size until all the extra text is on the previous page.

   

   

Important! This method is also suitable for headings if one or two words are carried over to the next line. Another method: put a non-breaking space between words; to do this, use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+Shift+Space” or special characters in the “Symbol” tab.

Difference between Word 2003 and Word 2007

The information presented in the article is relevant for the Word 2007 version. The table shows the differences between versions of the text editor when formatting text.

Action	Word 2003	Word 2007
Changing letter spacing	Format > Font >	Home > Font > Spacing. Select "Condensed", enter a value, click "OK"
Find and Replace	Edit > Replace	Home > Editing > Replace
Insert special characters	Insert > Symbol > Special Characters	Insert > Symbols > Symbol > Other Symbols > Special Characters

Once you find out the reason for large spaces between words in Word, you can easily eliminate it. To do this, you need to use the built-in functions of a text editor and tidy up the appearance of the document.

You can also watch a thematic video on the topic of the article.

Video - How to remove spaces between words in Word