Hi.  I am running Offfice XP on my laptop, which uses Windows XP Home
as the operating system.  Currently I am faced with an EXTREMELY
annoying problem with character formatting that I would like someone
to help me fix.  The problem: whenever I type a word that begins with
the letter "I" MS Word automatically capitalizes the letter.  This is
happening with words that are in the middle of sentences, so it makes
absolutely no sense.  For example, if I type the sentence below, here
is how it would come out:
We would like more Information about this Initiative

To fix this, I have to backspace over the word and then retype it. 
Upon a retype, I no longer have the capitalization problem......It is
as if Word knows that I'm annoyed and just wants to make me go through
the hassle of manually correcting each word that begind with the
letter "I".  Anyway, I'm currently writing a very large document and
a) need to use this piece of software for this project and b) don't
want to end up in the Psych ER from utter frustration......PLEASE
HELP.  $5 bonus for a good answer that works.

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Request for Question Clarification by gwagner-ga on 30 Oct 2003 14:49 PST

Hi swannes,

This is pretty strange indeed. Since I've never had this problem
myself, I can only guess what it is. Please let me know if this
solution works and I'll be happy to post it as an answer.

I'm fairly sure it has something to do with the Word's Autocorrect
function. Go to "Tools" on the top menu bar and then click on "Auto
Correct...". Once you are there you can do one of two things. Either
uncheck the "Replace text as you type" checkbox and Word won't correct
anything anymore, or look for an entry in the list that says that
every "i" will be replaced by a capital "I". That should do the trick.

Good luck,
gwagner-ga

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Clarification of Question by svannes-ga on 30 Oct 2003 14:57 PST

You can go on and post that as an answer.  The one caveat with that
solution is that it does leave the pronoun "I" uncapitalized both at
the beginning and end of sentences.  However, that gets the job done
and the bonus.  Your answer was quick and effective.  Thanks.

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Clarification of Question by svannes-ga on 30 Oct 2003 14:58 PST

or rather, it leaves the pronoun "I" left uncapitalized in the middle of sentences:)

Hi svannes, (sorry for misspelling your nickname before)

I'm glad it worked out. Just one quick tip about the pronoun "I". You
might want to include a new rule saying that every "i " (=lower case i
plus space) be converted to "I " (= upper case I plus space). That way
you would still get the pronoun-effect but remove the annoying feature
of capitalizing every "i" if it's simply the first letter of a word.

Okay, for completeness sake, here's my answer from before:

I'm fairly sure it has something to do with the Word's Autocorrect
function. Go to "Tools" on the top menu bar and then click on "Auto
Correct...". Once you are there you can do one of two things. Either
uncheck the "Replace text as you type" checkbox and Word won't correct
anything anymore, or look for an entry in the list that says that
every "i" will be replaced by a capital "I". That should do the trick.

Thanks for the bonus! :-)
 
Best wishes, 
gwagner-ga

great.  thanks

I think you might want to put a space both before and after that "i" (
i ) so you don't end up with capitals on all words that end in "i".

Apteryx

Hi Apteryx,

Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure that's necessary though. At
least my version of Word only considers whole words when determining
whether to apply a rule.

Best,
gwagner-ga