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317
In Word, what are the strange 'backward P' characters?


In Word, these markers indicate the ends of paragraphs, and are created when you press RETURN at the end of a line. You will also see other characters which are normally invisible, such as spaces, which appear as dots between words and tabs, which appear as tiny arrows.  The characters will not print in this visible form.

It is useful to see these characters when you are checking the layout and general structure of your document.  This can help with many formatting problems.

If you do not want to see these markers, click on the Show/Hide icon in the Paragraph group on the Home tab.

Show/Hide Button

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Created by Jason Bailey on 27 July 2001 and last updated by Adrian Chorlton on 1 August 2016