Odd Pixel in Text (2003)

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Greetings,

I’m hoping perhaps one of you can assist me. I have this odd pixel in several places within my text. See attached. I’d like to remove it, but I can’t determine why it’s there.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

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Could you attach a small sample document that demonstrates the problem? You can replace the text with dummy text.

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Certainly, here it is.

Thanks!

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It’s a “private use character” Hex F020 (Unicode), inserted either using Insert | Symbol or by typing F020 then pressing Alt+X.
Apparently, this character tells Windows that it has zero width, and the dot is shifted to the left of its “official” position.

You can get rid of one instance as follows:
– Click just to the right of the dot.
– Press Shift+left arrow to select it. You won’t see anything selected, but the insertion point should disappear.
– Press Delete.

To get rid of all instances at once:
– Select Edit | Replace…
– Enter F020 in the ‘Find what’ box, then press Alt+X.
– Leave the ‘Replace with’ box empty.
– Click ‘Replace All’.

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How do you know this stuff?

Thanks millions, that fixed it for me.

Cheers,

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I don’t “know” it – I’m inquisitive.

This one had me baffled for a while – I initially thought it wasn’t a character in the text but eventually it dawned on me that it had to be a symbol. Then it was a simple matter of selecting the character and pointing to Insert | Symbol to see which one it was.

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After reading Hans’s analysis, I remembered a similar “dot” showed up in another thread last month: Unicode by-product? (Word XP/2003). Perhaps it’s going around?

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