Leading the way in Microsoft Office Development

Step 1 - What are Paragraph Marks ?

In Word the definition of a paragraph is the paragraph mark plus all the characters that precede the paragraph mark up to but not including the previous paragraph mark.

The number of paragraph marks in a document is equal to the number of paragraphs in the document.

You can enter a paragraph mark into a document by pressing Enter.

The paragraph is a character just like all the others and therefore has a font, colour, paragraph spacing etc and can also be cut, copies and pasted just like all the other characters.

Paragraph marks contain most of the information used by Word to control fonts, formatting, tabs stops, lines, boxes, shading, styles, picture locations, line spacing, numbering and much more. Always have the paragraph marks displayed. (Tools > Options > View), select Tab characters & paragraphs from the Non printing characters

The paragraph mark () contains all the formatting instructions for the preceding pargarph. It is also advisable to always have this on as it will help you to understand the formatting by displaying any non-printable characters.

The paragraph mark (P) contains all the formatting instructions for the preceeding paragraph. You can use the whats this pointer to obtain useful information about a paragraph

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You can toggle the display of paragraph marks in your document using the Show/Hide command on the Standard toolbar.

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These are non-printing characters and will not be printed even if they are displayed on the screen.

All the formatting options specific to an individual paragraph are stored in the paragraph mark.

If you delete the paragraph mark you will delete all the subsequent formatting.

The paragraph formatting will then match that of the next paragraph.

It is always best to work with these displayed so you don't delete any by accident.

There is always a paragraph mark at the end of a document.

Pressing the End key will move you to the end of the line, unless the line ends with a paragraph mark, in which case the cursor ends up before the paragraph mark.

Deleting Paragraph Marks

Sometimes when you try to delete a paragraph mark by pressing Delete.

To delete a paragraph mark you must explcitley select it in order to be able to delete it.

Paragraph Mark Contains the Formatting

Both Character and Paragraph formatting is saved in the paragraph mark.

Character formatting is in the paragraph mark unless you explicitley override it.

The font, point size, colour, bold, italic etc of every single character in a paragraph takes on the formatting dictated by the paragraph mark unless you explicitely manually override it.

Paragraph formatting is stored in the paragraph mark.

The indentation, spacing, default tabs, page breaking, bullets, numbering etc

Merging Paragraphs

When you merge two paragraphs together the paragraph mark associated with the first paragraph is applied to the second paragraph

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This logic is different to that applied to section breaks where the second section mark gets applied.

Text animation – you can use one of six simple animations to draw attention to the text when on the screen:

Step 4 - Things to Remember

There is always a paragraph mark at the end of a document.

You cannot overtype the paragraph mark.