Understanding Smart Cut and Paste

Word includes a feature, by default, that tries to make your editing chores just a little easier. This feature, called smart cut and paste, adds or removes spaces when you are cutting or pasting text. This may sound odd, but it is really helpful in many situations. For instance, if you are pasting a word into a sentence, smart cut and paste makes sure that spaces are added around the word so that it does "run in" to the words you are pasting near.

Likewise, when you cut a word from a sentence, sometimes the cut might result in two spaces left: the ones that used to surround the word being pulled. Instead, smart cut and paste results in one of the spaces being automatically deleted so the resulting sentence has (at least) the proper number of spaces in it.

You can control smart cut and paste in the following manner:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. This displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Edit tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Set the Smart Cut and Paste check box as desired. If selected, the feature is turned on; if not selected, it is off.
4. Click the Settings button (available only on some versions of Word) to make changes in how smart cut and paste works.
5. Click on OK.