Thanks, Sue, and thanks to the others who responded with speed that still
has my head spinning. Yes, indeed, I seem to be a holdover (I actually use
Courier New for some legal writing) but I accept the invitation to join the
21st Century. However, I don't find any references to spaces after
sentences in Spelling and Grammar in Word 2003 as you suggest. I tried
Word's Help which was a laugh, of course. Is there another location for
that setting?
(My main reason for wanting control over the spacing issue is my desire for
consistency in a finished document. I actually use Courier New for some
legal writing. But my main concern is that I would like all the
post-punctuation spacing to look the same, even with proportional fonts like
Times New Roman. If I wrote everything myself, there would be no problem.
The problem--and it may be a small one, to be sure--arises when I paste
other text into mine.)
(Curiously, I see a check mark in Spelling and Grammar) under Proofing Tools
for "Use German post-reform rules". Like so many other things in Word I
can't recall doing that, although it may have come up in the course of some
of my writing in German.)
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
As others have mentioned, the practice of using two spaces after
punctuation
is a holdover from typewriter practice and is based on the spacing of
monospaced fonts. Unless you are using Courier New or some other
monospaced
font (almost all fonts, including the default Times New Roman, are
proportional), a single space after punctuation is adequate and
conventional.
If you make the sensible decision to join the rest of the world in this
practice, then what you need to do is change the setting in Word's grammar
checker (Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar: Grammar: Settings: Spaces
required between sentences). There are (in Word 2003) three possible
settings: "1," "2," and "Don't check." It sounds as if you currently have
"2" selected. You can change to "1" or "Don't check," or (even more
sensibly) you can turn off grammar checking altogether and use your own
good
sense.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so
all may benefit.
"Joe McGuire" wrote in message
...
Lots of stuff that I paste into Word from other sources was written with
a
single space after a period (or other puncuation) ending a sentence. All
of
these then display with little green marks showing that Word thinks there
is
a problem (in this case Word is correct; I have always put 2 spaces after
sentence punctuation, even before Bill Gates got a job). I can then
laborious wade through the entire document and fix each instance one at a
time. Oy!! Is there a setting in Word that will automatically correct
that
spacing after punctuation? If not, what sort of syntax could I use in
Find
and Replace?