To do this, click the ‘¶’ (pilcro) icon to reveal hidden formatting (or type Shift+F1 to reveal formatting in a sidebar). To be able to see them, you need to ensure you are showing paragraph marks and all other formatting in your document. Non-breaking spaces are the same width as a regular space character, so their presence is not obvious. To work in more depth with non-breaking spaces, you need to be able to see them. Alternatively, you can select ‘Non-breaking Space’ from the Insert>Special Characters menu. The quickest way is to press Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar (or on a Mac, type Option+Spacebar). Where lines are short, such as in a layout involving multiple columns across the page, non-breaking spaces can contribute to untidy paragraphs with uneven widths. For example, in pages where space is a premium they can create orphans or widows which a line break could resolve. There are occasions when non-breaking spaces are unhelpful. However, you do need to be careful when considering how to use non-breaking spaces. Non-breaking spaces inserted in cases like these will ensure words appear as and where you want them to. You might also want to keep titles and names together, such as Mr Frodo or Mount Doom, or initials and surnames, such as JRR Tolkien. It’s not only with technical text or numbers where non-breaking spaces are useful. Numbers, where a style guide specifies a space is to be used instead of a comma as a thousand separator – 10 000 rather than 10.Per cent, where a % symbol preceded by a space is preferred – 100 % rather than 100.You can set up your style manual to guarantee there are no line or page breaks for example in: But you can change aspects of your style manual if you wish, to suit a piece of text or document, or to fit a third party’s style guide if you’re editing for a client. It’s a decision that’s set in your style manual.

However, most of the time it’s not up to you to choose whether or not to use a non-breaking space. For example, dates look better when they appear on one line. There are times when it’s important that text is kept on the same line – where it makes more sense, to save any confusion, to make it easier for the reader or just to look neat. PerfectIt, for example, does this right from Word and has a 14-day free trial.

There are tools that can automate these checks and much more right from MS Word. Figure 1: Non-breaking spaces keep numbers and symbols on the same line Automate how you check for non-breaking spaces right from Microsoft Word

Notepad++ regular expression no spaces