Outlook 2003 – adds space before and after when doing a ‘reply’ to a messag

When doing a ‘reply’ in Outlook, HTML format, it adds a space before and after the letter. Example: if changing “spce” to “space”, when you go to add the a, it comes out “sp a ce”. Have to go in and delete the spaces. Extremely annoying.
Is there any ‘fix’?