If you have ever opened a Word document and suddenly seen strange symbols like dots, arrows, or a backward “P” (¶), you are not alone. Today I want to introduce you to a range of symbols, and in particular, the paragraph marks found in Word documents.
Now, these unusual symbols are officially called non-printing characters. They do not appear when you print the document, but they are incredibly useful for understanding and fixing formatting issues. Whenever I receive a email relating to a Word document from a client asking for assistance, the first thing I do is display the non-printing characters as this helps me identify where the problem may be coming from. These markers are the first step in troubleshooting problems in Word.
What does the Paragraph Character (¶) mean?
The paragraph character, also called the paragraph mark, shows where a paragraph ends.
Every time you press the Enter key, Word inserts a paragraph mark. This means what looks like a blank line is often actually an extra paragraph.
Seeing these marks helps you:
- Identify unnecessary blank paragraphs
- Understand spacing issues
- Control how text flows through the document
How to turn on paragraph marks
The Show/Hide button allows you to easily turn on or off paragraph marks. It is available on the Home tab of the Ribbons and allows you to toggle the feature on or off to get a better understanding and control of your document’s structure and layout.
To enable the Show/Hide button:
- Open Microsoft Word.
- Open an existing document from your Recent documents list.
- From the Home tab click the Show/Hide button:
- Alternatively, you can press Ctrl + Shift + 8 on the keyboard.
- The non-printing characters will now be visible within the document:
- See how many of the non-printing characters from you identify from the list of options below.
Other common non-printing characters
When the Show/Hide button is on, you may also see some other non-printing characters. These can include:
Hard Enter (Paragraph marker)
This one is the easiest and it indicates the end of a paragraph. You insert a paragraph mark when you press the Enter key.
Spaces
A dot shows a space between words. This automatically appears when you press the Spacebar.
Arrow (Tab)
An arrow indicates where a tab has been inserted. This can be inserted using the Tab key.
Soft Enter
A soft enter is where a manual line break has been inserted rather than a new paragraph. You can insert a new line without starting a new paragraph. Insert this by pressing Shift + Enter.
Page Break or Section Break
A page break forces content to start on a new page whilst a section break allows you to break up a document in sepearate sections allows different layout options such as page orientation and columns. These are inserted using the Layout tab on the Ribbon and clicking the Breaks button to choose an option.
Pagination
Word includes several pagination settings which allow you to control if paragraphs and/or headings will stay together instead of potentially splitting across multiple pages. Pagination settings are identifiable via a square symbol which appears to the left of a heading or paragraph.
The three (3) main pagination settings are outlined below.
Why this matters for troubleshooting
Turning on paragraph marks and other formatting symbols can quickly reveal:
- Extra paragraph characters causing unwanted gaps
- Blank pages created by hidden breaks
- Misaligned text caused by tabs or multiple spaces
- Layout issues caused by incorrect line breaks
Instead of guessing what is wrong, you can see exactly what is happening in your document.
Common issues
Below are some common issues that displaying the non-printing characters can help solve.
Blank spaces between paragraphs
If you are seeing blank spaces between paragraphs, this is often caused by multiple empty paragraphs. To fix this, you can enable the Show/Hide button and identify how many empty paragraphs you have, which can then be easily removed. Simply click in the empty paragraph (where the paragraph mark is shown) and press Delete on the keyboard to remove.
A blank page that will not delete
Sometimes you might end up with a blank page in the middle of a document which you cannot seem to delete. It has no content left but it still won’t go away even when you’ve pressed the Delete button 15 times. This is usually hidden paragraph marks, or maybe even a page or section break, or both! By using the Show/Hide button you can identify what is causing the blank page and make it quicker to delete.
Text jumps to the next page even though there is space to fit
This is a common one that I run into with clients. Headings or paragraphs are automatically jumping over to the next page even though there is adequate space for it to fit onto the previous page. Why? This is usually a pagination setting but the only way to know if there are any pagination settings applied is by displaying the non-printing characters!
Let’s look at an example:
- The document below has a heading at the top of page 2, that could easily fit along with the paragraph underneath onto page 1:
- From the Home tab, click the Show/Hide button or press Ctrl + Shift + 8 on the keyboard.
- I can now identify that pagination settings have been applied to the heading PLUS the paragraphs that follow as there is a square symbol showing to the left of the heading/paragraphs. Let’s see which pagination settings are enabled.
- From the Home tab, locate the Paragraph group and click the Paragraph settings button:
- From the Paragraph dialog box, select the Line and Page Breaks tab.
- Under the Pagination section, identify which settings are ticked (or enabled).
- Widow/Orphan control: This prevents a single line of a paragraph being left alone at the top or bottom of a page.
- Keep with next: This keeps the current paragraph on the same page as the next paragraph.
- Keep lines together: This keeps all lines of a paragraph on one page.
- Based on the options which are ticked (enabled), untick the ones you do not want applied and click OK.
- In my example, the Keep with next option is enabled on the heading and the next three (3) paragraphs. By unticking this option, my heading and paragraphs will move back up onto page 1 and take up the remaining space.
Most formatting problems in Word are not random and are caused by hidden paragraph characters and other non-printing marks. Once you turn them on, the problem becomes much easier to see and fix.
Feel free to leave any questions below in the comments or check out some of my other Microsoft Word tips and tricks.