If I copy and paste text from a .txt file into MS Word and then reformat into another font, say Ariel, it ends up breaking way before it reaches the end of the margin. For example:
The quick brown fox …margin
jumped over the lazy …margin
dog.
Is there any way to get rid of those extra paragraph breaks en masse without going through each and every line, one by one, and deleting them individually? Because if I do a search and replace, it eliminates the ones I actually want to keep (the *actual *ends of paragraphs).
Short answer: Prior to selecting the text in Notepad, go up to Edit, and uncheck the “Word Wrap” option.
Longer answer: If that doesn’t work, you may have done a Save while the Word Wrap was on. Notepad is kind of quirky with this, and it will take some time to get the hang of it. If you’re ever not sure whether the lines are wrapping or not, just make the window a little wider or narrower, and watch what happens.
Assuming there’s a space between paragraphs, do this:
Go to File, Replace
Replace ^p^p with ~~
Replace ^p with a single space.
Replace ~~ with ^p
“^p” indicates a paragraph break in Word.
If there’s no space, you’ll need to put an extra paragraph (i.e., hit “Enter”) after each paragraph first.
I did this with a couple of novels I scanned in. I had to add the extra paragraph breaks, but it took about 10-15 minutes a chapter (and I was editing them, too).