A Fast Way To Replace Two Spaces After The Period With One

As the officer manager of a midsize firm, I review all documents created by the accountants for spelling, grammar and style. No matter how often I tell them that the period at the end of a sentence is followed by one space—not two—I get memos with mostly two spaces. The writers tell me they learned to use two spaces in school and it’s a typing habit they can’t break. You’re in the editing business, what do you suggest?

I suggest you accept reality and add a macro to your computer that corrects every sentence end to one space with the click of a mouse.

To create the macro, click on Tools , Macro to open the Record New Macro wizard. Give the macro a name (remember, it must be one word)—such as Replace2Spaces —and click on OK . While the macro recorder is running, press Ctrl+H, which evokes the Find and Replace screen. In the Find what box enter a period (.) followed by two spaces and in the Replace with box enter a period followed by one space and then click on Replace All .

Finally, click on Stop Recording on the Recording toolbar.

To make it easy to engage the macro, place a macro button for that command on one of your toolbars or set a keyboard command. To create a button, click on Toolbars ; to create a keyboard command, click on Keyboard (see screenshot below).

Important : In the Store macro in box be sure All Documents (Normal.dot) is showing. If not, engage the drop-down menu until it appears. Then follow the wizard’s directions.