How to Show Formatting Marks in Word (¶)

When a document won't behave — a blank page that won't go, text that jumps, spacing that looks wrong — the cause is almost always something you can't see. Turning on formatting marks shows you exactly what's there.

Press Ctrl + Shift + 8 (think Ctrl + *), or click the ¶ button in the Paragraph group on the Home tab. Press or click again to hide them.

• ¶ — a paragraph mark. You pressed Enter.
• · (a raised dot) — a space.
• → — a tab.
• ↵ — a manual line break (Shift + Enter).
• ° — a non-breaking space.
• Dotted lines labelled Page Break, Section Break (Next Page) or Column Break.

A blank page at the end. Look for extra ¶ marks or a page break at the bottom. Select and delete them.

Uneven spacing between words. Look for double dots — two spaces instead of one.

Text that won't line up. You may have used spaces instead of a tab, or several tabs where one would do.

A heading on its own at the bottom of a page. Look for a manual page break in the wrong place.

Headers changing unexpectedly. Look for section breaks you didn't mean to add.

Formatting marks are only shown on screen. They never appear on paper or in a PDF.

Go to File → Options → Display. Under Always show these formatting marks on the screen, tick the ones you want to see all the time — Tab characters and Object anchors are handy — and leave the ¶ button off for a cleaner view.

Press Command + 8, or click the ¶ button on the Home tab.

The ¶ button is stuck on. Check File → Options → Display — if Show all formatting marks is ticked there, untick it.

When a layout goes wrong, press Ctrl + Shift + 8 first. The answer is usually staring back at you.