A punctuation irritant in Word 2007

What am I mistakenly activating in Word 2007 that causes a small superscripted zero to appear to the left of some punctuation marks - colons, question marks, quotes etc. It's extremely perplexing and irritating to have to keep getting rid of them. (And what purpose do they serve anyway??? Why would anyone WANT them?) I'd be very grateful if someone could help me avoid them. My thanks in advance.

Hello haidee & welcome to Vista forums.
Have you checked Word 2007 help?
Open Word > help [ the question mark, top right hand corner] There is loads of info here that may be of help to you, plus a search facility.

Thanks. Will do.

Hi JMH I scoured the help section and could find no reference to my problem... I don't exactly know what to correctly call it even. So I guess it's hard to do an accurate search. It's similar to the little superscript zeros one gets when one transfers an email to word sometimes... I guess I'll have to live with it.

haidee said:

What am I mistakenly activating in Word 2007 that causes a small superscripted zero to appear to the left of some punctuation marks - colons, question marks, quotes etc.

Click to expand...

Some change has apparently been activated that triggers this automatic response – It's similar to the replacement/addition of characters in AutoCorrect. Try clicking the Windows icon on any MS Word page, click the Word Options button below, and go to Proofing, then AutoCorrect Options. Check all of the headings, but particularly:
1. Math Auto Correct – check all of the substitutions to see if your situation is reflected there; and 2. AutoCorrect – Replace text as you type. Again, check all of the symbol changes.

Will do that. Thanks!

Hi Imperfect1 - your suggestion sounded very promising... I went there and checked out everything - the closest I got was in the math autocorrect but I would have had to type \circ or \degree to get something like it and I just don't think I'm in the habit of typing either one of those. combinations! I had occasion to cut and paste something from the internet earlier today and, lo and behold, there were the little degree signs in some places -- this time in lieu of a space! (In Word docs they seem only to be in front of specific punctuation marks - quotation marks, questions etc. But once they're there, my only recourse is to open a new document and start typing all over again. Or I can spend my time backspacing them out, which is a real chore. So.... It's a mystery! Thanks for the suggestion though!

haidee, this is really a long shot, but before you completely abandon trying to solve the problem through Auto Correct, why don't you try creating the exact set of symbols that show up in Word (in error) -- reboot -- and then change them back to "normal." Even though it is clear that you didn't program Word to respond with this weird symbol showing up on your screen, doing this sequence might possibly revert the system to normal.

Very often finding the answer to these kinds of problems becomes a series of investigations, and trial and error. Clearly something has been changed in your system that instructs it to type this strange symbol. So you may have to do some serious digging to figure out exactly what it was.

Another idea that pops into my mind is to do an Advanced Search for the symbol and see what pops up. (Be sure to check "include non-indexed, hidden and system files" and search your entire computer.)

Also, have you looked through all of the symbols in the Symbols link, to see if that symbol is there? If it is, maybe there is a way to delete it.

And my last thought is, have you tried experimenting with Word's "superscript" function, because the way you describe the symbol, it seems as if it's written in superscript.

Hi imperfect1
Those are intriguing suggestions. Thank you! I'll certainly try them. I suddenly have quite a bit on my plate right now and time is at a premium so I'll have to take my time with them. (Also as my geek status is non-existent! I'm somewhere between beginner and low-level intermediate. Forgive me if any feedback is slow in forthcoming... But, again, many thanks!