Show all symbols in word

You can show or hide, if you see a lot of strange symbols in the document, some or all of these
symbols by clicking the button Show/Hide ¶ (or pressing Ctrl+* or
Ctrl+Shift+8):

Notes:

• Each of nonprintable characters that you will see after highlighting this button, can be
  selected and removed from the document. Also, you can select, delete or replace all
  occurrences of a particular kind of special symbols, see
  Replacing special characters.
• There are some other useful elements that you can use in a document such as bookmarks, fields,
  etc. You can show and hide them too, independently from the nonprinting symbols. See
  How to show/hide bookmarks in a Word document,
  How to turn on or turn off highlighting off fields in a Word document.

You can selectively show only spaces in the document, only Tabulation symbols,
etc. To show or hide specific nonprintable symbols, do the following:

   1.   On the File tab, click the Options
button:

   2.   In the Word Options dialog box, open the
Display tab and then check or uncheck options as you like:

• Tab characters or Tabulations: If you check this checkbox, all tabulations
  will be shown as an arrow symbol (→):

  

  See
  A perfect text alignment using tabs
  and
  Setting tabs using the Tabs dialog box.

• Spaces can differ:
  • When you type the text, usually you separate words (sentences or even syllables in
    some languages) by pressing the Space key (also known as Spacebar).

    Usual or common space is shown as a little dot between words:

    
  • To keep words together, can a Nonbreaking space (also called
    non-breaking space, no-break space,
    non-breakable space (NBSP), hard space, or
    fixed space) be used. A Nonbreaking space in the Word document
    looks like a degree symbols between words:

    

    See
    How to keep two or several words together in a document Word.

  • Sometimes more specific spacing characters like Em Space, En Space or
    ¼ Em Space are used.

    These spaces distinguish by their width:

    • Em space means a space the same width as a lowercase m
      character.
    • En space means a space the same width as a lowercase n
      character.
    • ¼ Em space (also known as mid space) accordingly means a
      space the same width as a lowercase m character divided by 4 —
      one fourth of an Em Space wide.

    Em space and En space are shown as common space, as a little dot
    between words, but with wider gaps before and after them. ¼ Em Space looks
    like a vertical bar between words:

    

• Paragraph marks or pilcrows (¶) represent a paragraph break.

  They are inserted by Word at the end of every paragraph. In other words, it appears every
  time when you press Enter:

  

  Notes:

  1. As you can see in the example above, many of emails are formatted incorrectly. See
     How to remove paragraph symbols for every line in Word.
  2. The paragraph mark ¶ contains all the paragraph formatting. To copy all paragraph
     formatting, you can select this symbol, copy it, and then paste it into another
     paragraph. The last ¶ in the document contains formatting for the last section of the
     document, or for entire document if it contains just one section.

     See
     How to copy paragraph or numbering format without changing the text format
     and
     How to do anything with paragraph format with keyboard.

• Hidden text can be used in any Word document because it is a pre-defined format like
  Italic or Bold. It isn’t necessary to do something extra to add hidden text.

  Hidden text is shown with a dotted underline:

  

  See
  Check the document for hidden information
  and
  11 Shortcut Keys to control font format.

  Notes: In contrast of other nonprinting characters, hidden text can be
  printed. See
  How to see/show a hidden text in a Word document
  and
  How to print a hidden text in a Word document.

• Optional hyphens are used to break specific lines of text.

  They are shown as ¬.

  For example, if a lengthy word wraps to the next line and leaves a large amount of white
  space, you can insert an optional hyphen in that specific word so that the first part
  appears on the first line. If the word later moves to a different position because of
  editing, the optional hyphen does not print. If further editing moves the word back into
  a hyphenation zone, the hyphen reappears:

  

  See
  Using nonbreaking and optional hyphens.

• Object anchors are shown in a document just when you select an object.

  Any floating object in a document has an anchor that is tied to a particular paragraph
  . It can be moved, replaced or
  removed with that paragraph like its part.

  It is possible to move any anchor to any other paragraph.

• The Show all formatting marks checkbox mirrors the button Show/Hide ¶ that was
  described above. When you click to highlight that button on the ribbon or non-highlight it
  (or use shortcut keys for that), that checkbox will be checked or unchecked appropriately.

Other formatting marks that you can see in the document by clicking on the Show/Hide ¶
button:

• Line breaks:

  a) As a right-angle arrow pointing to the left
  . This symbol can be added
  to the document to start a new line, not a new paragraph, by clicking on
  Shift+Enter:

  

  b) As a right-angle arrow between two vertical lines
  . This symbol shows the
  break that separate text around object, such as a caption text or an image from the body
  text.

  

• Pagination breaks — a Column break, a Page break and a Section break
  are used for the better formatting of the document:

  

  

  

  To add the page break, just click Ctrl+Enter.

• Keep marks are shown as a small black bullet ■ on the margin next to the paragraph:

  

  Keep marks represents some of paragraph options:

  • Keep with next,
  • Keep lines together,
  • Page break before.

  See
  How to keep lines and paragraphs together in a Word document
  for more details.

  You can open the Paragraph dialog box and see keep marks by double-clicking on the
  appropriate keep mark.

• End-of-cell and End-of-row marks that you can see in tables as universal
  monetary symbol or currency sign (¤) looks like a circle with four lines
  radiating from the corner:

  

  End-of-cell marks like a paragraph marks contain formatting for the last (or only)
  paragraph in the cell and formatting for the cell.

  End-of-row marks placed at the end of each row of a table. They contain formatting
  for the row.

Notes:

• You can show or hide all these special symbols, but they are still non-printable! You can
  print just some of them.
• To delete any of these special characters, select them and press the Delete key.
• Displaying of these special characters is very helpful for troubleshooting. If your text
  doesn’t break as you like, it can be because you have too many (or the wrong) paragraphs set
  as Keep with next.

  If your printer is adding a blank page at the end of your document, it could be because of
  several empty paragraphs at the end that are forcing an extra page.

  If an automatic number insists on being bold even though you have applied bold formatting
  only to the part of the numbered paragraph, it can be because of paragraph marks. You need
  to select the paragraph mark and un-bold it, since automatic bullets and numbering take
  on the formatting of the paragraph mark.

See also this tip in French:
Comment afficher / masquer les symboles non imprimables dans le document Word.

Your average keyboard has enough letters, numbers, and punctuation marks for all your day-to-day typing needs. But what if you need symbols or special characters that aren’t on your keyboard?

Well, in Microsoft Word, you have three main options:

1. Use the Symbol menu.
2. Learn some ASCII codes.
3. Use Microsoft Word’s special character shortcuts.

In the rest of this post, we’ll look at how to do each of these in your writing. Watch the video or read the post below to get started:

1. Using the Symbol Menu

To see the Symbol menu in Microsoft Word, go to Insert > Symbols on the ribbon and click the Symbol button (or Insert > Advanced Symbol > Symbols in the menu system in Word for Mac).

This will open a quick access menu of 20 frequently used symbols to pick from. However, you can also access the full range of special characters in Microsoft Word as follows:

• Go to Insert > Symbols and click Symbol to open the menu.
• Click More Symbols… to open a new window.
• Scroll through until you find the symbol you want to use.
• Click Insert to add the symbol to your document.

The symbol will then appear in your document at your cursor. Microsoft Word will also add it to the quick access menu, saving your time if you need to use the same symbol again.

2. ASCII Codes

ASCII codes each indicate a different symbol, so you can use them to add special characters to a document quickly via the numeric keypad:

• Learn or look up the correct ASCII code for the symbol(s) you need.
• Turn on Num Lock on your keyboard to activate the numeric keypad.
• Hold down the Alt key and type the required code.

The corresponding symbol will then appear at your cursor position.

3. Shortcuts for Special Characters

For some special characters, your simplest option is to let Microsoft Word do the hard work! There are, for example, shortcuts available for the following common symbols:

You’ll notice we’ve included an “autocorrect” version for each symbol above. In these cases, Microsoft Word will automatically correct the specified text to create the symbol.

For example, to add a trademark symbol to a document, we have two options:

1. Hold down Ctrl + Alt + T at the same time.
2. Write “(TM)” and let Microsoft Word change this to the symbol.

These shortcuts are very quick and simple, so it is worth memorizing them if you use any of these symbols frequently. Similar shortcuts are also available for accented letters.

It seems a lot of people can’t find how to get certain symbols or
characters into their documents, so I hope to offer every method here.

Insert Symbol

This is one of the easiest methods. If you use the symbol a lot, you may
want to memorize the shortcut key for it, or create a shortcut key or
AutoCorrect entry for it. This is Word’s Symbol dialog.

Word’s Symbol dialog also has a Special Characters tab that
you shouldn’t miss if you use Word a lot. One of the most commonly looked for
symbols here is the Paragraph return, also called a Pilcrow.

Special for Excel

Excel lovers can download a special
Excel Insert Character
dialog created by Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP and owner of
PeltierTech. Thanks very much, John!

Character Map

If you can’t find your symbol or character using the Symbol
dialog, try the Character Map, which comes with Windows. To use it, hit Start Run
and type «charmap» (without the quotes) and hit Enter.

Shortcut Keys

Both the above methods may show keystrokes to use, such as the
one above displays:

Keystroke: Alt+0182

To use this keystroke, hold your Alt key while typing the
numbers on the number keypad. It won’t work using the regular keypad. Once you
type the last number, your symbol or character should appear.

Equation Editor

For even more symbols, usually of a scientific or mathematic
nature, or for creating Arithmetic problems, use the Equation Editor. Don’t
expect to jump right in and become an expert. It takes a bit of time. My
experience has been, too, that every time I try to edit the fonts, I mess it
up even more. Try to live with them the way they are.

To access the Equation Editor, hit Insert Object,
choose Microsoft Equation 3.0. This brings up the toolbar. You can create an
equation, which looks a lot like a graphic in your document. To edit the
equation later, just double-click it. To create another, you can copy the
first one, and paste it, then double-click it to change it.