Displaying Spaces in a Document

Have you ever worked on a document that included multiple fonts and the printout didn't quite match what you wanted? Sometimes there was more space between words or sentences than what seemed right, and you didn't quite know what the problem was?

I have found that the culprit is often my own fault. I may have placed extra spaces between words or sentences in such a manner that the text looks fine on screen, but doesn't quite fit the bill when finally printed. The solution, of course, is to remove the extra spaces and make sure there are a consistent number of them between both words and sentences. The problem with the solution is that it is often difficult to see how many spaces there really are.

Fortunately, Word allows you to easily see where spaces occur in your documents. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options. Word displays the Word Options dialog box.
2. Click Display at the left side of the dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Make sure the Spaces check box is selected.
4. Click on OK.

Now, all your spaces appear as small visible dots. It is very easy to tell where two visible dots appear, as opposed to two invisible spaces. Delete your extra spaces as you would delete any other characters, and you will have your document cleaned up in no time.