All -
So I tried all suggestions so far and of course TRIM and CHRTRAN() work as expected; unfortunately that doesn't resolve the issue.
I don't see how the issue is in the PRG that generates the report, as it's called from two places--one exhibits the problem; the other doesn't. I feel it has to be an "environmental" setting (e.g., so SET setting).
This is a tough issue to describe textually, so attaching two screengrabs here. One is from a scan of the actual printout, showing the "double dots" issue where EVERY space is replaced by ":". The other shows a "print" to a PDF, where the "field's footprint" is highlighted in grey.
Really appreciate any other thoughts... This is an odd one!
Many TIA!