Spacing After Sentences

Some people like to put two spaces at the end of a sentence; other people prefer one. In fact, at times it seems to be the new hot-topic-of-the-day among writers. (The discussion of what was proper and right raged on for a couple days on DailyWordTips this week.)

The purpose of this tip is not to say which spacing preference is correct. The purpose is to signify how you can adjust your typing for the spacing you prefer. The Help Wanted question that resulted in this tip indicated that WordPerfect would enforce either two-space or single-space end-of-sentence spacing based on a configuration setting. Word provides no such setting, but there are things you can do.

First of all, if you are using Word 97 or a later version of Word you can configure the grammar checker to flag any end-of-sentence spacing that doesn't match your preferences. Simply follow these steps:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Spelling & Grammar tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Spelling & Grammar tab of the Options dialog box

3. Click on the Settings button. Word displays the Grammar Settings dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Grammar Settings dialog box

4. Use the Spaces Between Sentences drop-down list to indicate how many spaces you prefer between your sentences.
5. Click on OK to close the Grammar Settings dialog box.
6. Click on OK to close the Options dialog box.

Now the grammar checker will flag any sentences that don't conform to your preference with a green wavy underline. When you then right-click on the flagging, you can choose to correct the spacing for that occurrence.

If you want to do mass replacements of your end-of-sentence spacing, the best thing to do is to use the search and replace features of Word. The techniques to do this have been covered in other issues. For those of you who want to automate the process of using search and replace, the following VBA macro is quite handy. It will replace any number of spaces at the end of a sentence with two spaces:

Sub TwoSpaces()
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "([.\?\!]) {1,}"
        .Replacement.Text = "\1  "
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchWildcards = True
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

If you want to alter the macro so that it ensures all your sentences have only a single space at the end, you can simply change the .Replacement.Text line so there is only one space in the replacement string. Another thing to note about this macro is that it corrects any sentences ending in a period, question mark, or exclamation point; it will not catch and correct any sentences that end in a quote mark.

Finally, just in case you are curious, you cannot use AutoCorrect to change end-of-sentence spacing. Why? Because AutoCorrect uses the space character as a signal to trigger checking what was just typed. Thus, AutoCorrect entries cannot utilize spaces.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (488) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.