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• Nonprinting Characters Word
• Column Breaks Are Nonprinting Characters
• Ms Word For Mac Free Trial

To make nonprinting formatting characters visible, either click the Show/Hide paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols button (see image below), or press ctrl-shift-8. This actually toggles the display, so you can hide them again by repeating this action. Sep 25, 2016 In Word 2011 for Mac it could be difficult to find the symbol “ ¶” that can show/hide nonprinting characters in your documents, like in other version of Word. In this version of Word for Mac (2011), you need to do it this way: Go to main menu and click on Word. Click on Preferences to open the preferences window.

Nonprinting Formatting Marks In Word

Nonprinting formatting marks show you where certain kinds of formatting have been applied in your Word document. For example, you can see where the tab key has been pressed and where a page break has been inserted.

Formatting marks are not visible by default, and they do not appear when your document is printed. However, you can easily switch them on and they are an invaluable tool if you need to resolve any formatting issues you might have in your document.

To make nonprinting formatting characters visible, either click the Show/Hide paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols button (see image below), or press ctrl-shift-8. This actually toggles the display, so you can hide them again by repeating this action.

Controlling Formatting Marks In Word Options

If you click the File tab > Options > Display, you can see a series of checkboxes that help you control what formatting marks you see.

Click to enlarge

Their use is not intuitive and it goes something like this:

• if you put a check in the Show all formatting marks box and click OK, you will see all formatting marks in your document. This is like clicking on the Show formatting marks button in the ribbon . If you go back and uncheck that box, it hides all formatting marks and is the same as toggling them off using the Show formatting marks button again.
• if you put a check in any of the other formatting boxes, those kinds of formatting will display all the time – whether you have toggled the Show formatting marks button on or off.
• you might have guessed that the Show all formatting marks check box in Word Options is pretty much redundant because we have a much easier tool to use on the ribbon that does the same thing: the Show formatting marks button .

You know what? I just wouldn’t change the Word Options from their default settings.

Nonprinting Characters Word

What Do The Formatting Marks Mean In Word 2010?

Now that we’ve seen how to turn on and off the display of formatting marks, let’s find out what they all mean.

There are several different characters, such as a space and tab, which Word does not normally display on the screen. In addition, there are several special characters that Word uses for housekeeping purposes. For instance, Word uses special characters to indicate the end of a line or the end of a paragraph. You can display these special characters, which Word refers to as nonprinting characters, by following these steps:

Column Breaks Are Nonprinting Characters

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 or a later version, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Display at the left side of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Display options in the Word Options dialog box.

3. In the Always Show These Formatting Marks On the Screen section, select the characters you want Word to display.
4. Click on OK.

Why would you want to display these characters? Quite simply, because it is much easier to understand spacing when the characters are displayed. You can quickly tell, for instance, when you have inserted two spaces between words or added an extra carriage return. This allows you to more accurately control the look of your document and what it contains.

There is also a quick way you can turn nonprinting characters on and off using the ribbon. Display the Home tab of the ribbon and look for a tool in the Paragraph group that looks like a backwards P. (Technically this character is called a pilcrow.) This tool is known as the Show/Hide tool. Clicking it toggles the condition of the Show All Formatting Marks checkbox in the dialog box shown earlier. Thus, it can quickly turn on and off the nonprinting character display.

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There is one interesting 'gottcha' to this, however. In the dialog box, you can select to individually display or hide specific nonprinting characters. If you select the checkboxes for all these individual characters, using the Show/Hide tool still only toggles the Show All Formatting Marks checkbox—the individual settings for specific characters are not affected at all.