Formatting woes in Word

Ever wonder why Word won’t place words on the page as you want it to, or why Word is printing a blank page that you didn’t ask for? 

Word has a handy tool that will show you the secret formatting that is probably what is creating problems for you.  Click on the Show/Hide icon, right in the middle of the ribbon in the Home tab.   It looks like a paragraph mark: ¶

Click on it now.  Suddenly, you can see dots for spaces ∙∙∙ and  ¶  for paragraphs.  If you’ve tabbed in a few extra times, like this →    →    →  that will show, also.

These symbols won’t print, when you print your document, and if they annoy you, simply click the icon again to make the formatting invisible again.  But when you aren’t getting the results you expect, clicking the Show/Hide icon can often help you see where you went wrong.