# Highlighting space between words in Word 2010

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/highlighting-space-between-words-in-word-2010/613629>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 22, 2012, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/highlighting-space-between-words-in-word-2010/613629 "2012-02-22T14:18:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2012, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/highlighting-space-between-words-in-word-2010/613629/1 "2012-02-22T14:18:05Z")

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Two weeks ago I was able to use the highlighter function to change the color of the spaces between some of the words in a paper. (Basically, I was highlighting the relevant spaces in red.) This worked intuitively.

Today, I am doing _exactly the same thing_ as far as I can tell, yet the highlighting won’t “take”. I can highlight letters, and I can highlight strings that include both letters and spaces, but if I try to highlight a space, it simply won’t highlight. It remains white.

Any idea what could be going on here? Is there some setting somewhere that would affect this?

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**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/highlighting-space-between-words-in-word-2010/613629/2 "2012-02-23T00:08:34Z")

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If you write “hilightedd sspace” and highlight “d s” then delete just the d and s, the space will remain highlighted. Of course I doubt that’s what you were doing, but if you really need to do it, that’s the only thing I found that works.

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**Author:** ![briankeys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@briankeys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/briankeys)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/highlighting-space-between-words-in-word-2010/613629/3 "2012-02-23T00:28:21Z")

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Are you highlighting spaces from a paper written on another version of word or a .doc file? Maybe try saving/converting it to a word 2010 file.