Unlock the Power of the Paragraph The paragraph is arguably the most important element in a Word document. Your success in formatting a document ultimately depends on understanding how it works.

How to Turn Off the Paragraph Symbol in Word. Microsoft Word includes formatting options that allow you to view all types of normally invisible marks, such as spaces, tabs and paragraphs.

Paragraph styles format the entire paragraph, as you might expect. Character styles format selected text–a sentence, phrase, word, or even an individual character.

If Formatting marks or or non-printing characters are turned on in Word, it displays hidden characters such as Tab characters, Spaces, Paragraphs marks, Hidden text, Optional hyphens, etc.

If you see spots, and paragraph marks, and other formatting characters in your Microsoft Word documents, making them go away is easy.

Microsoft Word uses carriage returns to distinguish between individual paragraphs and allow you to format them separately.