In professional writing, it’s considered a major faux pas to allow text strings or phrases such as Mr. Smith, June 11, van der Haam, and Chapter 7 to break across a line. Instead of having to be obsessive in your proofreading, we’ll help you plan ahead to avoid this problem by using non-breaking spaces.

To insert a non-breaking space:

1. Type the first part of your text string, such as Mr.
2. Press [Ctrl][Shift][spacebar] to insert a non-breaking space.
3. Type the rest of your text string.

To ensure you’ve created a non-breaking space, click the Show/Hide button on the Standard toolbar. The non-breaking space displays as a degree sign, as shown in Figure A. (In Word 2004, the non-breaking space displays as a tilde above a regular space.)

Adapt for Word 2007
Even though Word 2007’s ribbon interface frustrates many long-time Word users, the good news is that many of the keyboard shortcuts you use still work in Word 2007. So you can still insert a non-breaking space by pressing [Ctrl][Shift][spacebar].

To show or hide your formatting marks in 2007, click on the Home ribbon and, in the Paragraph area, you’ll find the same Show/Hide icon.

Filed under: Microsoft Office Tutor