List Nonprinting Characters Ms Word For Mac

  1. Add a new page or a page break. To add a new blank page or page break to your document, click Pages on the Insert tab, and then choose either Blank Page or Page Break. If you choose Page Break, all subsequent content after your insertion point will be moved onto the next page. You can delete a blank page at the end of your document, or empty paragraphs or page breaks,.
  2. Microsoft Word includes two types of special characters: (1) text characters that don’t appear on standard keyboards and (2) formatting characters for text layout. Today’s post explains all of the special characters in Microsoft Word for Office 365, Word 2019, and Word 2016. Word 2013 and Word 2010 offer similar special character options.

In Microsoft Word, you can choose Insert→Symbol→Advanced Symbol to display a more advanced symbol browser. Inserting symbols quickly with Media browser in Office 2011 for Mac. The Symbols tab of the Media browser contains only popular symbols, fractions, mathematical signs, and even some music notations. This is a quick, easy-to-use tool.

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.

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.

List Nonprinting Characters Ms Word For Mac
Formatting MarkMeaning
paragraph mark (pilcrow)
line break
Column Break
Page Break
Continuous Section Break
Line and Page Break
.Space
°Nonbreaking Space
?Tab
¬Conditional Hyphen
¤End Of Cell Marker (tables)
Anchor

They allow your word processor to tell you how your document layout works.

Earlier this year, someone walked past while I was word processing and noticed my screen was full of odd characters.

Usually people who notice this go “Aargh! Hideous!”, but this time the response was “That looks useful”, and it is. The blue symbols are non-printing characters, and they show why your layout is happening. As the name implies, they only appear on your screen, not in print, or when you export to PDF.

In most word processors, non-printing characters are indicated by a ¶ symbol, which is also known as a pilcrow.

Word

Go the the “Home” tab of the ribbon, find the “Paragraph” section and make sure the “¶” button is enabled.

Once enabled, the non-printing characters appear as shown below. An unusual feature is that it places a large black square at the start of lines that have “Keep with next” enabled under “Text flow”. This is a common format for headings, as it guarantees that, if the paragraph immediately following the heading wraps onto the next page, the heading will move with it.

LibreOffice

Find the “Standard” toolbar, and make sure the “¶” button at the right end is enabled. This option may also be found in the “View” menu, under “Nonprinting characters”.

LibreOffice displays the characters much like Word, except that non-breaking spaces (see below) receive a grey background.

Pages

In Pages, non-printing characters are referred to as “Invisibles”. They may be enabled from the “View” drop-down menu on the toolbar, or in the “View” menu in the menu bar.

Invisibles in Pages are always coloured blue.

Spaces are what you type with the space bar.

List Nonprinting Characters Ms Word For Mac

Non-breaking spaces will “glue” words together so they can’t be separated over a line ending. The way you type them depends on your operating system, not your application. Under Windows, they are typed with ctrlshiftspace; under Mac OS, they are typed with optionspace. If it is important that a name or phrase appear in full without being broken across a line or page, use a non-breaking space. Do not over-use them, or your line endings will be ragged1.

Paragraph breaks are what you type with the enter or return key2.

Line breaks move to a new line without starting a new paragraph. This will not be visibly different from a paragraph break unless the paragraph formatting includes space before or after, or special first line formatting. They will also wreck the layout of Justified text. Sym vs 150 scooter manual. Line breaks are entered with shiftenter or shiftreturn. This makes it easy to accidentally type a line break while intending to enter a paragraph break. Once typed, the only way to know that bad layout was caused by an accidental line break is to make the non-printing characters visible. Lg flatron w1934s driver windows 10.

List Non Printing Characters Ms Word For Macs

Tabs create a measured gap to the next piece of text on the same line. The exact spacing depends on the tabs set up in the paragraph format. Tabs are too complex to be fully discussed here, but once understood they can be used to create elegant layouts that are easy to edit. Type tabs using the tab key.

I always have them enabled, even if I’m writing a simple letter. It takes a little time to adapt, but they help me detect and fix layout problems when I create the problem, before it spreads through a large document.

If you can’t stand typing with the non-printing characters visible, it is still good to enable them when you are formatting a document with complex layout.

How To Display Nonprinting Characters Word

If you disagree with your co-workers on the correct number of spaces to use between sentences, making those spaces visible for all to see will not help.

List Non Printing Characters Ms Word For Mac Osx

  1. In HTML, non-breaking spaces are actually the intended purpose of the “ ” entity. Unfortunately we mostly misuse it to include formatting commands in our content. [↩]
  2. The “return” key dates from the time of typewriters. These had a “carriage return” lever that you pulled to move on to the next line. [↩]