Whenever you hit keys like Tab, Return, Spacebar, and so on, Word is actually sticking what it calls nonprinting characters in. Seems pretty normal, right? But if I reveal the hidden formatting, here’s what we see: Now, why would you want to see those characters, you may ask? Well, if the text within a document is behaving oddly, figuring out whether something behind the scenes is working against you is definitely the way to go, especially with how persnickety Word can be about moving elements around.
Well, Microsoft Word can do this, too, and that’s what I’m gonna go over today.
I’ve mentioned before that Pages has a way that you can show and hide what it dubs invisible characters, so if you need to see paragraph returns, tabs, spaces, and so on, it’s as simple as pressing Shift-Command-I or choosing View > Show Invisibles in that program.
