How can I remove all returns within the text?

Question

I copied and pasted text onto pages from the internet, but the text does not go all the way to the end of the set margins that i have on Pages, instead it goes about halfway or so and begins on a new line. how can i remove all of the spaces between the words so that it runs the full length of the page.
It blows my mind that i have to resort to seeking help on the apple forums for this problem, it seems like something so simple would be a standard feature when adjusting text on the page. The only thing that could frustrate me more is if it impossible to do on this software, or if it is simple to do and I was too stupid to figure it out. If it is impossible then I'm **** out of luck because the document is just to **** long to sit there for hours and manually delete every single last return.

Answer 1

Not to preempt your fun of playing with AppleScript, but here's my take on it:
tell application "Pages"
    tell document 1
        -- Make sure there's no selection
        select insertion point before character 1
        set cc to count characters of body text
        set returnOffsets to (character offset of every character where it is return)
        -- Reverse order, since deletion would alter all subsequent offsets
        repeat with n in reverse of returnOffsets
            if (n > 1) then
                if n < cc and character (n + 1) is return then
                    -- Treat double returns as a true paragraph break.
                    -- Delete the extra.
                    delete character n
                else if character (n - 1) ≠ return then
                    -- Change single returns into spaces.
                    set character n to " "
                end if
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell