[Solved] Help with word spacing (text flow)

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johnjrice
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[Solved] Help with word spacing (text flow)

Post by johnjrice »

Hi
I'm putting text in a cell in a table. When editing text that includes cut and pastes, I get some lines that don't use all the space in the line. When I try to correct it by putting the cursor at the front of the next word and hit "Delete", it moves the first word down to the next line. Then I hit the space bar, but instead of a single space I asked for, it restores the incorrect new line jump and moves the first word back to the line it started in.

Thanks
John
Last edited by MrProgrammer on Thu Jul 08, 2021 3:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: tagged solved.
John Rice
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Bill
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by Bill »

Please upload a sample document. I don't know how deleting could possibly move text down.
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johnjrice
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by johnjrice »

It does it between the words "two" and "domains".
Attachments
Sample.odt
(15.73 KiB) Downloaded 109 times
John Rice
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by FJCC »

There is a special character between "domains," and "Bacteria". If you delete that and replace it with a normal space, "domains" will hop up to the previous line. You can see these characters by choosing the menu item View -> Field Shadings. This might be caused by pasting from a web page. You can avoid importing weird formatting from web pages by using Paste Special and choosing Unformatted Text.
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johnjrice
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by johnjrice »

I could put the problem in different words: There is enough space left in the line for the next word, but it would not let me correct it...

Thank you, I will try the Unformatted Text. Stay tuned...
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by johnjrice »

Partly solved! Field Shading does show the problem and I can correct it! Is there a blanket way to remove special characters from a document?
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robleyd
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by robleyd »

Try Find/Replace - you may have to copy the special character into the Find field. I suspect what you are seeing is non-breaking spaces from a web page.

I just tested on your sample document and successfully replaced the characters with Space.
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johnjrice
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by johnjrice »

Thanks for the help!

Is there a blanket way to remove special characters from a document?
John
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by johnjrice »

Ok, will try that. Thanks again everybody!
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Re: Help with word spacing

Post by johnjrice »

Solved! Thanks
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MrProgrammer
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Re: [Solved] Help with word spacing

Post by MrProgrammer »

Hi, and welcome to the forum. Thank you for the attachment. It allowed us to see what was causing the behavior you reported.
johnjrice wrote:I get some lines that don't use all the space in the line.
This difficulty is created because some of your text contains a No-Break Space instead of a Space. These characters are highlighted in the picture below. Text flow rules prevent Writer from breaking the words separated by the No-Break Space, thus you have, in effect, much longer words and the line lengths will look quite irregular. In your sample, the first four words are treated as one by Writer. And Writer cannot move "domains" to the line above because domains, Bacteria and Eukaryota is considered to be a single word.
NoBreakSpace.gif
Websites may use the No-Break Space to achieve the formatting they want. If you copy/paste from them, the No-Break Space is transferred to your Writer document. Using Edit → Paste Special → Unformatted Text transfers the No-Break Space from a website as a normal Space. It can also prevent transfer of other unwanted, sometimes invisible, formatting from the web page to your document. There are hundreds of posts on this forum about problems with invisible formatting in content transferred by copy/paste.

On a Mac, if you have used copy/paste, you can exchange the No-Break Spaces for normal Spaces using Edit → Find & Replace, Search for {hold the Option key, press the space bar, release the Option key}, Replace with {press the space bar}, Replace All. This will restore the expected text flow in your document, though you will also have to fix the missing space after the period at the end of the third sentence. Consult your Mac's documentation if you do not know which key is the Option key. This shows where mine is.
Option.png
Mac FAQ Q66: Is there a simple way to type a No-Break Space (U+00A0)?
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Re: [Solved] Help with word spacing

Post by RoryOF »

If one has the troublesome text in a cell (or document), one can select it, Ctrl X to cut it, then Ctrl shift V (or /Edit /Paste Special) to repaste it, choosing "plan text" from the popup. No need to be fiddling with Find and Replace to catch the non-breaking spaces.
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Villeroy
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Re: [Solved] Help with word spacing (text flow)

Post by Villeroy »

RoryOF wrote:If one has the troublesome text in a cell (or document), one can select it, Ctrl X to cut it, then Ctrl shift V (or /Edit /Paste Special) to repaste it, choosing "plan text" from the popup. No need to be fiddling with Find and Replace to catch the non-breaking spaces.
As far as I know, this is a matter of content (characters) rather than formatting. Paste-special will paste the same characters as the normal paste would. I do get the non-breaking spaces when I paste the example content into a plain text editor with automatic line breaks.
Nevertheless, it is a good idea to paste web content without formatting in order to get more control of the formatting in your own content copy.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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