Skip to content

Turn off Paragraph Marks and Formatting Symbols in Word

< 1 minute read

green cloud

Have you ever opened up a Word document to find it full of paragraph marks and other symbols?

If you’re editing the doc or troubleshooting a formatting issue, you may find this view especially useful. But if you don’t want to see the formatting marks, simply toggle the paragraph button–seen in the middle of the ribbon above or as described in the video–to turn them off.

If the toggle button didn’t work, you may try this method:

  1. From the File tab, select Options.
  2. Click the Display tab.
  3. In the section Always show these formatting marks on the screen, un-check everything except Object Anchors.
  4. Press OK.

For information on what the formatting symbols represent, check out this page: What do all those funny marks, like the dots between the words in my document, and the square bullets in the left margin, mean? (Note: some of the references are to earlier versions of Word, but the explanations are still generally up to date.)

Sign up for our newsletter