Why are there little dots in the spaces in between words in my Microsoft Word documents?

Question

There are little paragraph symbols and dots in the place of spaces in my Word document. What is it and how do I turn it off???

Answer 1

you have the special character indicator on, it displays spaces, carriage returns, tabs, etc - formatting that won't be printed.

to disable it again, you need to click on the icon within the toolbar near the top of word that has been inadvertendly turned on.

it looks like this ¶ and will toggle on and off this function.

NOTE: this button/icon is on the 'standard' toolbar in word, if you have that toolbar disabled you will not see the above symbol.

Answer 2

Unclick the paragraph button, or hit control + Shift + 8 and they'll go away.

Answer 3

Please refer to this article: http://www.atschool.org/login/resource/skills/microsoft/word/characterview.htm