Space Insertion Following Colon or Semicolon

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I'm using Word 2000 and when I type in a document "Children:", the resulting
text inserts a space between, in this example, the "n" and ":" -- "Children :"
The same thing happens when I use a semicolon and type, in this example, " .....
date unknown; place unknown." -- "....date unknown ; place unknown." This does
not happen all the time! Can someone explain why this is happening and what I
can do to eliminate these spaces? Thanks!

Bill
.