Help! Word is Spacey!

On May 13th, I posted a How To. In that case, it was a How To: Remove Section Breaks. We ended up with a great discussion in the Comments Section on deleting those sometimes pesky breaks, as well as quite a few other How To questions and answers.

Today, I thought I’d follow up on one of those questions. This one was from Karen Walker:

Okay, here's my issue. I have Windows Vista and use Word for my writing. If I manually hit enter to go to the next line, it automatically skips a space as if it's a new paragraph. I have not been able to figure out how to change this. Help!!!
Karen Walker

Elizabeth Spann Craig, aka Riley Adams, answered Karen’s question with:

Karen, what I do with the Word line-spacing issue is to hold down the control key and press enter at the same time. Then it'll just single space that one line.

This, of course, is a great answer. Thank you Elizabeth.

On the off chance that Karen’s question about Word skipping a space was referring to Word automatically indenting as if it’s a new paragraph, I’ll add this:

Karen, most likely you have “told” Word to indent each new paragraph (usually 0.5”). When you do that, Word automatically indents each time you manually hit enter because it thinks you’re starting a new paragraph. When I say you “told” Word to do it, I mean either you manually went in to Format and set how far you wanted the indent to be, or Word did it for you when it saw you were indenting each time you hit enter (Word tends to try to read your thoughts and do things for you to make it easier.)

If you don’t want it to auto-indent, then you can go to “Format” then click “Paragraph” and look at “Indentation” and you’ll see where it’s set (by you or automatically by Word) to indent. Then delete it.

If you want it to auto-indent, just not this particular time, just hit backspace. Word will take you back flush with the left margin.

Thank you Karen and Elizabeth. You can find out more about Elizabeth Spann Craig/Riley Adams at Mystery Writing is Murder and about Karen Walker at author karen walker…following the whispers.

And thanks to everyone who participated in this month’s How To. There were a lot of questions. If you left one in the Comments Section that didn’t get answered, let me know.

The late Helen Ginger (1952-2021) was an author, blogger, and the Coordinator of Story Circle Network's Editorial Services and writing coach. She was also a former mermaid. She taught public speaking as well as writing and marketing workshops. Helen was the author of Angel Sometimes, Dismembering the Past, and three books in TSTC Publishing’s TechCareers series.