Displaying Nonprinting Characters

There are several different characters, such as a space and tab, which Word does not normally display on the screen. In addition, there are several special characters that Word uses for housekeeping purposes. For instance, Word uses special characters to indicate the end of a line or the end of a paragraph. You can display these special characters, which Word refers to as nonprinting characters, by using some of the choices in the Options dialog box. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the View tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. In the Nonprinting Characters area (Word 97) or Formatting Marks area (Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003), select the characters you want Word to display.
4. Click on OK.

Why would you want to display these characters? Quite simply because it is much easier to understand spacing when the characters are displayed. You can quickly tell, for instance, when you have inserted two spaces between words or added an extra carriage return. This allows you to more accurately control the look of your document and what it contains.