How to remove the gap between words. How to remove large spaces between words in Word

Good time everyone! In this article we will focus on analyzing spaces in the Word editor. Many people have probably encountered this phenomenon when we align the text in width and suddenly too many words appear between the words. large spaces. After opening a document, we can also unexpectedly observe large spaces between words. How to remove them will be discussed today.

The first thing that automatically comes to mind is to place the cursor at the end of the word before the space and press the “delete” key. In this case, it is assumed that the deleted word will pull itself up and stand as it should. However, this was not the case. The word is pulled up, but is placed close to the previous one, and if they are separated by the “space” key, then it again goes to its previous position. How to properly remove this big gap and will be discussed in the article.

How to remove width spaces between words in Word?

The first option is quite easy, but labor-intensive if there are a lot of spaces. To remove large spaces, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR.

The first thing you need to do is hold down the left mouse button to select the entire large space - from word to word.

After that, press the above combination and the large space will automatically become a standard one character. If the problem with large intervals is due to the fact that the lines were broken, in this case we do this. Open the “File” menu, the “Options” tab, and there we find “Advanced”. In the window that opens, check the box next to the line “Do not expand character spacing in a line with a break.”

Also, spaces can appear due to tab characters. You can find out by clicking the “Display Symbols” button on the toolbar.

After clicking this button, we will see the corresponding symbols on the page. They will appear as arrows pointing to the right.

In order to remove them, simply select these arrows with the mouse and press the SPACEBAR key.

Removing extra spaces in Word 2007 throughout the text

The options discussed above are good when there are few such large spaces in the text and you can gradually remove them all manually. But the text can be quite large, and there can be a lot of spaces. It will be very difficult to remove them this way. Or rather just as good, but very long and tedious.

Do automatic operation For all large spaces you can immediately use the AutoCorrect function. The replacement window is called up using the CTRL+H key combination, or by clicking the “Replace” button located on the right side of the editor toolbar.

As a result of one of these operations, a window will open in front of us in which we need to go to the “Replace” tab, and then click the “More” button.

In the newly opened window, find the line “Wildcards” and put a checkmark next to it. There is no need to change anything else. If there is only one space in the text, do the following.

Go to the “Find” line, place the cursor, press the “Space” key and write in this line (2;). This command means that if there are two or more spaces in the text, they will be removed. Next, go to the “Replace with” line, place the cursor and simply press the spacebar. There is no need to write anything here.

After that, click the “Replace All” button. The program will perform the replacement, removing all unnecessary spaces. That's basically it. Good luck in mastering the Word editor. And finally we look short video to remove spaces.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated or tedious with extra spaces. You can easily remove them. See you again!

This problem is very common among text message users. Microsoft editor Word like huge gaps between words that disfigure the appearance of the document. Let them be graduate work, abstract or accounting report, in any document such an oversight will immediately catch the eye. There are several reasons for this problem, we will look at it below. clear examples how to remove large spaces between words in Word, based on specific reason the appearance of huge indents.

Justifying text - mistake #1

In the Word text editor, users often work with text alignment centered, right or left. But the most common formatting of text is width alignment, which is where all lines are stretched across the entire width of the sheet, thereby creating huge long intervals between words.

This situation can be easily corrected if the format is not important when submitting the document. Make text without wide gaps can be done in the following way:

There is another simple option for how to get rid of the huge distance between words - this is the replacement big gap to a regular standard space. The following steps need to be taken:

There is another way, but it is quite difficult and time-consuming. This is a combination of keys such as: CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR. In this case, you need to manually select each wide indent and press the specified key combination. The large indent will be replaced with a small one. If the document has a small number of pages, then this method will probably be relevant.

Mistake #2: Unprintable character

When using keys such as “Enter” and “Shift”, it moves to the next line. If the document is still set to justify, the result will be gaps that are too long. The situation can be corrected in the following way.

MS Word has a fairly large selection of styles for document design, there are many fonts, and these are also 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 choose 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 tell you how to do long distances between words in Word, that is, roughly speaking, how to increase the length of the 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, some people use two or more spaces instead of one, others use them for indentation TAB key, 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 empty line) in the document to set 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 "Replaced by" paste the previously copied space ( CTRL+V), which was added from the window "Symbol".

5. Click 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. Repeat if necessary 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 it? 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 the") 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 space between words (the second paragraph of text in the screenshot), everything didn’t look right in the best possible way, 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 possibilities of this multifunctional program, detailed instructions work with which we will delight you in the future.

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 did not work, 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:


At this point, the appearance of the documents should already improve. If there is still extra space between words, then perhaps the text has Special symbols 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 a double space with a single one. 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

Sometimes, instead of a regular space, there may be a long space between words or non-breaking space. If you click display hidden characters, then in the text they will be in the form of a circle instead of a dot.


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


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

Sometimes it happens that after typing text on last page There are a few lines left in the section, which is contrary to the layout rules. According to standards, the sheet must be at least 1/3 filled.

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

  1. Select the last paragraph of a section or better all chapter. 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 enter in the field with the value minimum value 0.1 pt.

  5. If there is still text on the sheet, then you need to increase the size until all extra text will not appear on the previous page.

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

Difference between Word 2003 and Word 2007

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

ActionWord 2003Word 2007
Changing letter spacingFormat > Font >Home > Font > Spacing. Select "Condensed", enter a value, click "OK"
Find and ReplaceEdit > ReplaceHome > Editing > Replace
Insert special charactersInsert > Symbol > Special CharactersInsert > 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.

Also you can look thematic video on the topic of the article.

Video - How to remove spaces between words in Word