When I have downloaded a text to Writer a grey vertical line often appears after each full stop, indicating too much space. I could delete these lines manually - very tiresome. How can they all be eliminated in one action?
Gray background does not mean too much space but flags a non-standard space. I guess you’re under Window$ where you too easily generate (from the keyboard) U+00A0 NOBREAK SPACE instead of U+0020 SPACE. The former is rendered with a gray background to draw your attention. Another possible cause (you use word “downloaded”) lies in the way HTML contents is encoded to format web pages to follow designer specification: very often a non-breaking space is used instead of a regular space.
Copy one occurrence of the offending sequence (full stop+non breaking space) in the Find: box of Edit>Find & Replace and enter full stop+regular space in the Replace: box.
It also frequently occurs that multiple spaces follow full stop. This usage has been deprecated for decades even in the US. In addition, it disturbs the justification algorithm. So take the opportunity of this space transformation to remove also multiple spaces.
ajlittoz, many thanks, that looks promising, I’ll try it and report. I don’t use Word, I use Libre, but the downloaded files that need adjustment may well have been composed in the prevailing Word format. All very strange. Best wishes, Graham1.
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An alternative way to replace non-standard spaces with standard spaces is to
- In the Find field enter
\s - In the Replace field type a space from the keyboard
- Tick the box Regular expressions
- Click the button Replace All
This will replace all non-standard spaces with standard ones so might not be suitable for all languages. I use it for OCR’ed text which often includes special spaces that aren’t included in the original text.
The grey field is not printing nor exporting so if it is just an irritation then you can hide the shading by clicking Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer > Formatting Aids and unticking the box Non-breaking spaces
Many thanks, that’s most ingenious’ I’ll give it a try.
With best wishes
Graham