Remove spacing between paragraphs in Microsoft Word. Ways to reduce spaces between words in Word

Reasons - why in Word between words big gaps- there may be several. In this article I will talk about some ways to solve this problem.

Justify text

If your document does not require text to be justified on the page - the first letters of each line are on the same vertical line as the last - then you can align all the text to the left. To do this, select the desired fragment with the mouse, or everything typed by pressing Ctrl + A (hereinafter, all key combinations use English letters). Then on the "Home" tab, click on the button "Left Align Text" or Ctrl+L .

Tabs

Sometimes the reason for the large distance between words can be tabs. To check if they are used in a document, you need to enable non-printable characters: click on the icon that looks very similar to Pi. Tabs in the document are displayed as arrows. If there are any, delete them and put spaces. Spaces in non-printing characters are displayed with a dot: one dot - one space.

If there are many tabs, you can replace. We put the cursor at the beginning of the desired fragment. Then we select one tab character, i.e. arrow, and copy it - Ctrl + C; press Ctrl + H and in the window on the “Replace” tab in the “Find” field, put the cursor and press Ctrl + V. Put a space in the "Replace with" field. Press the button "Replace all". Next, an information window pops up, which shows the number of replacements performed.

Line end sign

If you have all the text selected in width, and you can’t edit it in another way, and the last line of the paragraph is very stretched, then perhaps at the end of this line there is an icon “End of paragraph”. First, turn on non-printable characters - "End of paragraph" is displayed as a curved arrow. If you have one at the end of the line, then simply delete it: put the cursor at the end last word paragraph and click "Delete".

spaces

This option is also possible: you copied something from the Internet, and between the words there is not one space, but two or three, so the distance is increased. With nonprinting characters enabled, there should be some black dots between words. It takes a long time to delete them throughout the document, so we will use the replacement. Press Ctrl + H, put two spaces in the "Find" field, one in the "Replace" field, click "Replace All". If necessary, you can put three in the "Find" field, then four, and so on. spaces, and replace them with one.

Hyphenation

If the document allows word wrapping, then the spacing between words can be edited in the following way. Select all text Ctrl+A , go to tab "Page layout". in "Page Options" click on the transfer icon and select "Auto". As a result, hyphens are placed in the text, and the distance between words decreases.

In this article, we tried to remove large spaces between words in the Word. I hope you made it.

You can change the indent - the spacing between paragraphs - to the left or right, as well as the spacing in the document. In addition, within the margins, you can increase or decrease the indentation of one paragraph or a group of paragraphs.

Interval
	Specifies the spacing before a paragraph.
	Specifies the spacing after a paragraph.
Interline	Select single for single spacing. To quickly select one spacing for an entire document, see the single-spaced document section.
To set line spacing to one and a half times single spacing, select 1.5 lines.
To set text to double line spacing, select Double. For information about how to quickly set double spacing for an entire document, see Double spacing in a document.
To set the minimum line spacing required to fit the largest character or graphic on a line, select Minimum and enter a value in the field meaning.
To set a fixed line spacing, expressed in points, select exactly. For example, if the text has a font size of 10 points, you can specify 12 points as the line spacing.
To set the line spacing as a multiplier expressed as a number greater than one, select Factor and enter a value in the field meaning. For example, setting the line spacing to 1.15 increases the spacing by 15 percent, while setting it to 3 increases the spacing by 300 percent (triple spacing).
Do not add	If you don't want extra space between paragraphs, check the box Don't add spacing between paragraphs.

In this article

Indent the first line of a paragraph

Indent all lines of a paragraph except the first

You can create an indent, that is, add an indent not to the first line of a paragraph, but to subsequent lines.

Large spaces between words in MS Word are a fairly common problem. There are several reasons why they occur, but they all boil down to incorrect text formatting or erroneous spelling.

On the one hand, too large indents between words can hardly be called a problem, on the other hand, it hurts the eyes, and it just doesn’t look nice, both in the printed version on a piece of paper and in the program window. In this article, we will talk about how to get rid of large spaces in Word.

Depending on the cause of large indents between owls, the options for getting rid of them are different. About each of them in order.

This is probably the most common reason for gaps that are too large.

If your document is set to align text to the width of the page, the first and last letters of each line will be on the same vertical line. If there are few words in the last line of a paragraph, they stretch to the width of the page. The distance between words in this case becomes quite large.

So, if such formatting (according to the width of the page) is not required for your document, it must be removed. It is enough just to align the text to the left, for which you need to do the following:

1. Select all text or fragment whose formatting can be changed (use the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl+A" or button "Select all" in a group "Editing" on the control panel).

2. In a group "Paragraph" click "Align Left" or use the keys "Ctrl+L".

3. The text will align to the left, large spaces will disappear.

Using tabs instead of regular spaces

Another reason is tabs placed between words instead of spaces. In this case, large indents occur not only in the last lines of paragraphs, but also in any other place in the text. To see if this is your case, run the following:

1. Select all text and on the control panel in the group "Paragraph" click the display nonprinting characters button.

2. If in the text between the words, in addition to barely noticeable dots, there are also arrows, delete them. If the words after that are written together, put one space between them.

Advice: Remember that one dot between words and/or characters means there is only one space. This can be useful when checking any text, as there should be no extra spaces.

4. If the text is large or just has a lot of tabs, you can remove all of them at once by performing a replacement.

Symbol "End of Line"

Sometimes the alignment of the text to the width of the page is a prerequisite, and in this case it is simply impossible to change the formatting. In such text, the last line of the paragraph may be stretched due to the fact that it ends with the character "End of paragraph". To see it, you need to enable the display of non-printing characters by clicking on the corresponding button in the group "Paragraph".

The paragraph break is displayed as a curved arrow that can and should be removed. To do this, simply position the cursor at the end of the last line of the paragraph and press the key "Delete".

extra spaces

This is the most obvious and most commonplace reason for large gaps in the text. They are large in this case only because in some places there are more than one of them - two, three, several, this is not so important. This is a spelling mistake, and in most cases Word underlines such spaces with a blue wavy line (however, if there are not two, but three or more spaces, then the program no longer underlines them).

Note: Most often, extra spaces can be encountered in texts copied or downloaded from the Internet. Often this happens when copying and pasting text from one document to another.

In this case, after turning on the display of non-printable characters, in places of large spaces you will see more than one black dot between words. If the text is small, you can easily remove extra spaces between words manually, however, if there are a lot of them, it can take a long time. We recommend using a method similar to removing tabs - search and then replace.

1. Select the text or piece of text in which you found extra spaces.

2. In a group "Editing"(tab "Home") press the button "Replace".

3. In line "Find" put two spaces in the line "Replace"- one.

4. Click "Replace All".

5. You will see a window with a notification about how many replacements the program has made. If more than two spaces are set between some owls, repeat this operation until you see the following dialog box:

Advice: Optional number of spaces per line "Find" can be increased.

6. Extra spaces will be removed.

Hyphenation

If word wrapping is allowed (but not yet installed) in the document, then you can reduce the spaces between words in Word as follows:

1. Select all text by pressing "Ctrl+A".

2. Go to the tab "Layout" and in the group "Page settings" select item "Hyphenation".

3. Set the parameter “Auto”.

4. Line breaks will appear at the end of lines, and large indents between words will disappear.

That's all, now you know about all the reasons for the appearance of large indents, which means you can make the gap smaller in Word yourself. This will help give your text a regular, well-read look that won't be distracted by too much spacing between some words. We wish you productive work and effective learning.

When editing text documents, users often encounter lines in which words are separated by large spaces. Such lines are very noticeable in the text and spoil appearance document.

In this article, we will look at the three most likely causes that can lead to such a problem, and also tell you how to remove large problems between words in Word in each of these cases. The tips given in the article are equally relevant for both Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and Word 2003.

Reason #1: Justify alignment.

The most common reason for large spaces between words is justification. With some configuration of words and strings long text editor Word makes a mistake and aligns the text in such a way that so-called large spaces appear in the line.

This problem can be solved in different ways. If the formatting of the document allows, then you can simply align the text to the left edge of the sheet. This can be done using the button on the Home tab or using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+L.

If you cannot change the text alignment method, then you can do otherwise. You can force all spaces in this string to be small. This is done very simply. Highlight a large space and press CTRL+SHIFT+Space.

As a result, a large space is replaced by a regular short one. In this case, this replacement occurs regardless of the string configuration. Repeat this replacement for all spaces in the string and you will solve the large spaces problem.

Reason #2: Unprintable "End of Line" character.

Pressing the Enter key inserts a nonprinting "End of Paragraph" character into the text and moves to the next paragraph. But, if you press the Enter key together with the SHIFT key, then instead of moving to the next paragraph, it will move to the next line. And if at the same time the text uses justification in width, then most likely you will get a string with large spaces.

In order to detect this problem, you must click on the "Display all symbols" button. In Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016, it's on the Home tab.

In Word 2003, this button is simply on the toolbar.

After turning on the "Show all characters" button, look at the end of the line with large spaces. If there is a symbol in the form of a left-curved arrow (as on the Enter key), then it must be deleted.

In order to delete the "End of line" symbol and thereby remove large spaces between words, you must place the cursor between the text and the "End of line" symbol, and then simply press the DELETE key.

Reason #3: Tab characters.

In some cases, large spaces between words are due to tab characters that have been inserted into a line of text instead of regular spaces. This problem is detected in the same way as the End of Line character. All you need to do is click on the "Show all characters" button and examine the string.

Tab characters will appear in text as long arrows pointing to the right. In order to remove them and remove large spaces between words, simply select the arrows with the mouse and press the SPACEBAR.

If there are a lot of tab characters in the text, then you can save time and replace them with regular spaces using the search. To do this, copy one of the tab characters and press the key combination CTRL + H. In the window that appears, paste the copied tab character in the "Find" field and a regular space in the "Replace with" field, then click on the "Replace All" button.

As a result of this replacement, all tab characters in your Word document will be replaced with regular spaces.

Description of ways to reduce extra spaces between words - large spaces - in Microsoft Word documents, taking into account the specifics of performing these actions for versions 2003, 2007, 2010.

How to remove large spaces in Word 2010 and 2007

1. Large spaces between the words of the document can be caused by the applied alignment of the text to the width of the page. If it is optional, you need to click on the "Left Align" button on the format bar to change the alignment.

2. To remove duplicate spaces, use the "Replace" menu item on the control panel. In the Find and Replace dialog box that opens, enter two spaces in the first field and one in the second. After that, you need to place the text cursor at the beginning of the edited text and click the "Replace All" button in the dialog box.

As a result, double spaces in the text are converted to single spaces, and the program will report how many such replacements were made. Press the "Replace All" button until the number of replacements made is 0, because between the words of the text there can be not only two, but three, four or more spaces.

3. Sometimes large distances between words may be due to the use of other characters (eg, tab, non-breaking space). To identify characters that are not visible in normal mode, the "Show all characters" button, which looks like the "Pi" icon and is located on the control panel above the "Paragraph" group, will allow. After pressing it, you need to repeat the replacement operation, entering in the first field not a double space, but the copied separating character.

How to remove large spaces in Word 2003

The operation of removing extra spaces in Word 2003 is also performed through the search and replace dialog, which is described above for Word programs of newer versions. The differences are minimal.

Here, this dialog box can be called as follows: using the menu item "Edit", select the "Find ..." command and go to the "Replace" tab in the dialog box that appears; or just press Ctrl+H.

To search for other space-increasing characters, you need to enable the "Show All Characters" button, which is placed in version 2003 on the "Standard" toolbar in front of the zoom window (this button is often hidden, and in order to see it, you need to click the down arrow on the toolbar ). Found characters should also be converted to single spaces through search and replace.