Why you should always use non-printing characters in Microsoft Word

One of the main problems users face when using Microsoft Word is how the program handles formatting. Sometimes it seems that the program has a will of its own! However, many of these frustrations can be solved by displaying non-printing characters.

What is a non-printing character?

A nonprinting character is a formatting mark that dictates how your document is laid out. As their name suggests, nonprinting characters exist only to support your on-screen formatting and do not appear on printed versions of your work.

Here are some of the most common non-printing characters:

Some special characters also appear in tables to indicate the end of a line or the contents of a cell.

By default, Word only displays these characters when you click the “Show/Hide” icon (¶) on the Home tab of the ribbon or when you press Ctrl+Shift+8. Click the same icon (or use the same keyboard shortcut) to hide them again.

Alternatively, to permanently display certain nonprinting characters, click File > Options or press Alt > F > T to launch the Word Options window. Next, click “View” in the left menu and check or uncheck the formatting marks in the list. When you’re finished, click “OK.”

I prefer to have all of these unchecked so that I have the option to turn them on and off via the ¶ icon in the Home tab. After all, they can sometimes get in the way!

Identify frustrating formatting issues

Because nonprinting characters reveal elements of your Word document that are usually hidden, such as spaces, line breaks, paragraph breaks, and tabs, they allow you to see its skeletal structure.

As a result, you can identify parts of your work where spacing, alignment, page breaks, and other elements are causing problems that, without the nonprinting characters visible, would be impossible to see (and, therefore, cause great frustration).

For example, the words in the first line of this document are separated by unusually large spaces.

When I enable non-printing characters, I can see that this formatting is caused by a line break placed after the period, and because the text alignment is justified, it forces the words on that line to fill the entire width of the page.

So I can remove this line break and replace it with a space or paragraph to fix this problem.

Rather than wasting time trying to visually diagnose the causes of formatting problems, you can see the problems at a glance by enabling non-printing characters with just one click.

Optimize collaboration

If you created your own document from scratch, adding every word, break, space, and paragraph, you are more likely to understand how the work was pieced together.

However, if you are collaborating with others on a document in real time or completing a document that has been sent to you, it is a good idea to get into the habit of enabling non-printing characters. This means you can make sure everyone follows the style guide or, at least, uses the same formatting “rules.”

For example, do they press Enter twice at the end of each paragraph, or is the document set to automatically add a space of a certain size after each paragraph? Do people use non-breaking spaces between numbers and words in a date (to prevent it from being split across two lines), or do they use regular spaces?

Enabling unprintable characters in collaborative situations (and encouraging others to do the same!) can help avoid differences in approach, meaning you (and others) won’t have to go back and edit their work later.

Ensure formatting consistency

Staying on the topic of consistency, let’s look at this example, where the first line of each paragraph is indented.

Although the two paragraphs appear consistent, the methods for achieving these indentations differ. In the first paragraph, a group of spaces was added, while in the second, the Tab key was pressed. This is only possible if non-printing characters are enabled.

Why is this important? Well, if I increase the font size of the document, the indent created via Tab will remain as it is, although the indent created via Spaces will change, because the size of the spaces changes with the font size. This means I will have inconsistent indentation.

So enabling non-printing characters means I can identify and, more importantly, rectify inconsistencies as soon as possible.

Make precise changes

So you have finished writing your fifty-page dissertation and you are ready to submit it to your tutor. Even if your document behaves and displays as you expect, it’s a good idea to make sure it’s presented and formatted in a clean, professional manner.

In this example, there are two unnecessary spaces at the end of the first title, which can only be easily identified when non-printing characters are enabled.

Here, extra paragraph markers at the end of the document spill over onto the next page, resulting in an unnecessary blank page that will only serve to affect how the document prints. Additionally, if I save the document as a PDF, this blank page will be marked at the end of my file.

Because I have spotted these extra characters, I can remove them from my document, and thus, need my printer to print a blank page.

Additionally, editing your document with nonprinting characters enabled can help you salvage some extra characters if you are forced to meet a limit, because spaces and tabs count toward the character total.

In addition to enabling non-printing spaces, there are many other ways to improve the formatting of your Microsoft Word, such as using multi-level lists, adding an automatic table of contents, and adding a space after your paragraphs.