[tonyboy9]

I pasted the following from a Word document, which has dots between all the words, and at the beginning and end of the text, a weird looking symbol I cannot paste here. I must have been too tired and whacked the wrong key, while working in Word, because I cannot get out of this weird format, and as you can see below, I cannot paste the text as it appears on my Word document. Please help.


Know Your Numbers
It is crucial to "Know Your Numbers" with respect to Blood Pressure. Life-threatening complications can develop over a course of years when hypertension exists. Increased pressure on the inner walls of blood vessels make the vessels less flexible over time and more vulnerable to the buildup of fatty deposits in a process known as atherosclerosis. Hypertension also forces the heart to work harder to pump adequate blood throughout the body. This extra work causes the muscles of the heart to enlarge, and eventually the enlarged heart becomes inefficient in pumping blood. An enlarged heart may lead to heart failure, in which the heart can not pump enough blood to meet the body's needs.

[zabusant]

Hi Tonyboy9!

Yup, you pressed "show all" button, It looks like a IP (only facing left instead of right, and the hole in the "p" is black). (that's probably the strange symbol you keep seeing everywhere).
You just need to find the button, click it again and it will go away.

[EAFiedler]

Hi tonyboy9

There is a backwards P on the toolbar, click that and the extra characters should be removed.

[tonyboy9]

For zabusant: How do I get to the "Show all" button to click again?

For EAFiedler: My toolbar is probably not configured like yours. Please give me a hint where to look for the backwards P, or do I need to use the 'Add' feature on my toolbar?

Tony

[EAFiedler]

My picture shows the toolbars in Word 2003. The Show/Hide Paragraph mark button is on the Standard toolbar.
View > Toolbars > Standard

If you still don't see the Show/Hide button, Right click the Toolbar and select: Customize
On the Commands tab, select the View category and scroll to the Show All icon in the Commands: window.
Select the Show All icon and drag it up to the Toolbar and drop it on the Toolbar.


Are you using a different version of Word?

In Word 2007, the Show/Hide Paragraph/Formatting marks button is on the Home tab in the Paragraph section of the Ribbon.

[tonyboy9]

Thanks, that did it, I clicked on Standard, clicked on the funny looking icon, and hocus pocus, a clean Word document.

Does this icon, the backwards P, do anything useful? Perhaps it isn't so bad after all.

Tony

[EAFiedler]

Yes, it shows the Paragraph and Formatting marks that you create.
If you hit the Enter/Return button, you see the backwards P.
If you hit the Tab button, you see a line with an arrow and of course for spaces there is a dot.

[Albantar]

Originally Posted by EAFiedler

Yes, it shows the Paragraph and Formatting marks that you create.
If you hit the Enter/Return button, you see the backwards P.
If you hit the Tab button, you see a line with an arrow and of course for spaces there is a dot.

It will also show hard and soft page breaks and section breaks, which can be very useful for debugging documents that present weird page numbering or page break problems...

[md2lgyk]

It's not a "backwards P." It's called a pilcrow.

[Anne Troy]

LOL md2lgyk. I think EA was describing what it looks like, not what it is. I would bet that only about 10% of people even know what the word pilcrow means.