Why does a space character appear before an expansion in an MS Word document?
This is caused by the “Smart cut and paste” option of MS Word. In some cases, Word is not quite as “smart” and makes a wrong guess, which leads to unwanted space characters. To fix the problem, open Word’s preferences and click “Edit”. There is a checkbox “Use smart cut and paste”. You don’t need to disable all of the “smart” features. To avoid the extra spaces, click the “Settings…” button and turn the option “Adjust sentence and word spacing automatically” off.
