As an alternative, you can use a buildingblock and be macro free.
Select an existing Journal entry or better yet create a new one along the lines suggested by Italophile (with or without creating styles), select it, press ALT+F3 to create the BuildingBlock.
Now you can insert a new journal entry header by simply typing "jour..." and pressing Enter when the autocomplete tip text line appears.
Advantages:
Macro free
No shapes
No empty paragraphs
Disadvantages:
If you share the document with others, you must share the template as well
If you want to use some keyboard shortcut with a macro:
Code:
Sub InsertJE()
On Error GoTo Err_NotFound
ActiveDocument.AttachedTemplate.BuildingBlockEntries("journalentry").Insert _
Selection.Range, RichText:=True
Exit Sub
lbl_Exit:
Exit Sub
Err_NotFound:
MsgBox "The building block ""journalentry"" was not found in " _
& ThisDocument.Name & " attached template.", vbInformation + vbOKOnly, _
"MISSING BUILDING BLOCK"
Resume lbl_Exit
End Sub