Let’s see together how to find and eliminate unnecessary spaces in Microsoft Word, so as to generate a serious and professional document without errors
When we write a document in Word we have to pay the maximum attention to the spaces we use between the various words: Too much space could spoil the shape of the text, as well as generate useless pages at the end of the document.
To generate truly professional documents we can rely on proofing systems included in Microsoft Wordso as to quickly find useless double spaces even on very long documents (difficult to correct without valid help).
In the following guide we will show you how to find and delete unnecessary spaces in microsoft word using the find and replace method or using the automatic correction system provided directly by Word (we will only have to adjust it according to our needs).
READ ALSO -> Text formatting tricks with Microsoft Word
1) Word’s Find and Replace
The first method that we can use to find and eliminate unnecessary spaces in Microsoft Word is to use the function Find and replacean indispensable ally for finding errors in very long and difficult to correct texts.
To proceed, open the document to be corrected with the latest version of the Word application, go to the menu Homepress the arrowhead under the key Edit and select the item Replace.
In the new window, go to the text field next to the item Findspress the space bar twice (to generate the two spaces to find), go to the text field next to the item Replace with and press the spacebar once.
Now that the system is properly configured, press on Find next to verify the correct identification of double spaces and use the key Replace to make the replacement.
To carry out the immediate correction of all the useless spaces present in the Word document, we can also make use of the key Replace everythingso as to speed up the correction of all double spaces regardless of the length of the document.
2) Word spell checker
Alternatively, we can program Word’s spelling checker to immediately report double spaces as you write, so that you can correct them immediately or correct them later (using Word’s spelling correction system).
To proceed, press on the top left of the menu Fileclick on below Optionslet’s go to the menu Proofing tools and make sure that both items are active Check spelling as you type And Mark grammatical errors as you type.
After carrying out this check, press the key Settings (next to the entry Writing style), scroll through the list of items to check and make sure that the item is checked Spacing or Spacing.
Press OK to close all windows and start writing the document: if we have done everything correctly, the double space error will be shown with a double blue underlineto indicate precisely the presence of too much space between two words or between two sentences.
To make the single space rule fixed we can always go to the menu Settings seen earlier, scroll down to the entry Punctuation Conventions and press on the drop-down menu don’t check present next to the item Space between Sentencesselecting one space as a rule for proper spacing between sentences.
3) Search for empty spaces between paragraphs
The blank spaces between paragraphs are the hardest to identifybecause they often hide between one page and another, taking up space and often generating sheets with a few sentences or even empty sheets (which make the document decidedly less professional).
To immediately identify these useless spaces between paragraphs, press CTRL+SHIFT+8 on the keyboard or, alternatively, go to the Home menu and press the inverted P-shaped icon (also called fly foot).
After activating the fly foot we will see the document fill up with reversed P’s: to find unnecessary spaces between paragraphs we just have to scroll the document looking for the reversed P’s, correcting where necessary (if we find too many P’s on top of each other or side by side).
On this subject we can read our guide on how to remove dots and p symbols in word.
Conclusions
Generating professional documents is not easy, but we can use all the tools offered by Word to be able to correct a long text and eliminate unnecessary spaces present between sentences, words and entire paragraphs. Without unnecessary spaces, the document will immediately be more beautiful, flowing and will demonstrate to anyone who reads it that we have created it with the utmost care.
Always on a Word theme we can read our guides on how to remove page breaks in word come on how to use Microsoft Word professionally and quickly with 5 useful functions.
Those who need to import text from other documents can read our article on how to import data into Word from Excel, PDF and websites.
