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Understanding Word's nonprinting characters or formatting marks. Word’s nonprinting formatting marks. Occasionally a new user of Word is alarmed to discover that his previously pristine document is full of strange symbols—dots, arrows, paragraphs marks, and the like. In Office 2011 for Mac, Word fields can help you accomplish a wide variety of tasks, including all sorts of automation. You can create a field in Word 2011 (in this case, one that shows the time), and you can add some optional formatting. Start with a new, blank document: Click the New button on. If your sheet contains zero values or contains calculations that produce zero values, you can hide the values or use formatting options to change how the values will display.

To display or hide formatting marks (e.g., spaces, tabs, and paragraphbreaks) in a Microsoft Word document:

Word for Windows

Microsoft Word Formatting Marks List

  1. In Word 2010, on the File tab, click Options. InWord 2007, from the Office Button menu, select WordOptions near the bottom right corner of the menu.
  2. Select Display from the listing at the left.
  3. In the section titled 'Always show these formatting marks on thescreen', check or uncheck the appropriate boxes to view the marks ofyour choice. To show or hide them all, select Show all formatting marks.
  4. To save your changes, click OK.

Word for Mac OS X

  1. From the Word menu, select Preferences...
  2. Select View.
  3. In the section titled 'Nonprinting characters', check or uncheckthe appropriate boxes to view the marks of your choice. CheckAll to see all formatting marks.
  4. To save your changes, click OK.

You can also toggle between displaying and hiding formattingmarks. To do so:

  • In Word for Windows, on the Home tab, in the Paragraphgroup, click the paragraph icon.
  • In Word for Mac OS X, click the paragraph icon in the Standardtoolbar. If you don't see the icon, from the View menu,choose Toolbars, and then check Standard.

Special marks that are hidden by default that affect how text is displayed in a document. For example, with formatting marks enabled soft and hard returns are visible (shown right). In this example, the soft returns look like arrows pointing to the left and the hard returns is a paragraph mark, which looks like a backwards 'P'. Formatting marks are often used to troubleshoot a document's layout, appearance, and any printing problems and can be enabled or disabled depending on your preference.

Enabling or disabling formatting marks

Tip

With Microsoft programs that support formatting marks press the Ctrl+*(Ctrl+Shift+8) shortcut key to enable and disable formatting marks.

The formatting marks feature can also be enabled or disabled by clicking the paragraph symbol in the toolbar, as shown in the picture. If the formatting marks button is not visible in your toolbar, you may be able to change this setting. Check the View drop-down menu (Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier) or the Home tab (Microsoft Word 2007 and later) for an option to display the formatting marks button.

Types of formatting marks

Below, is a list of the different formatting marks you'll see when enabled with a brief description.

Conditional hyphen

Any hyphen that has not been manually entered is shown as a conditional hyphen mark, which is a dash with a small line extending down on the right side.

Field code

A field code is a command or code that instructs Microsoft Word to insert special items, such as the current date, current page number, or custom graphics. For example, to display the updated current date in a document, use the {date} field code.

To create a new field code, press Ctrl+F9, and to toggle the display of field codes, press Alt+F9.

Line breaks

A line break is a break in the current line of text that doesn't create a new paragraph and is often done using the shortcut Shift+Enter. As seen in the image to the left, the line break resembles a symbol of an arrow pointing down and to the left. The same symbol is found on the Enter key on many computer keyboards.

Microsoft Word For Mac 2011 Formatting Marks List

Pagination breaks

Microsoft Office For Mac

A page break that is inserted manually into the document will be shown when formatting marks are enabled. Below, is a picture and an example of a page break mark. There is also a column and section break. To delete pagination breaks, move your cursor in front of the page break mark and press the Delete key.

Paragraph marks

The paragraph mark or pilcrow follows any new paragraph in a document. By default, when pressing the Enter key, Microsoft Word and most other programs create a new paragraph. The paragraph will continue until Enter is pressed again. If you want to drop down a line, but not end a paragraph, press Shift+Enter to create a line break in the paragraph.

Space character

Microsoft Word For Mac 2011 Formatting Marks Chart

The space character is the most common formatting marks and is represented as a single dot in place of each space in a document. These marks help with identifying two spaces instead of one and a tab created using spaces instead of a tab. The picture to the left is an example of a single space between the 'A' and 'B' characters.

Tab

Microsoft Word Formatting Help

Any tab in a document will be represented by an arrow pointing to the right, as shown in the picture. If there are multiple tabs, you'll have multiple arrows. If spaces are instead of a tab to format the text, you'll see the space characters, mentioned above.

Related pages

Microsoft Word For Mac 2011 Formatting Marks 1

End mark, Hard return, Paragraph, Soft return, Word processor terms

Open Microsoft Office documents on your Mac You can use the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps to open documents you created with Microsoft Office. Use Pages to open Microsoft Word documents. Microsoft open office excel mac.