Can anyone please help save my marriage by identifying a Blue coloured symbol that has appeared beside my Wife's cursor lol It looks like a Reverse Capital letter P with a Capital T to its right ...

She needs to get rid of it and so do I as I am sick of listening to what is this damned symbol doing on my screen .

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These are non-printing paragraph end marks. Have a look at http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

It is called a pilcrow. Toggle its display with the ¶ button on the home tab of the ribbon, or the standard toolbar in older Word versions. CTRL+SHIFT+8 also works.

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Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com

Many Word users (including me) find displaying these to be very useful. It takes some of the mystery out of formatting.

Thanks for the responses.

Unfortunately none of the fixes appear to be working have even tried to reset to original settings all to no avail.

Cheers Ric

If all you are wanting to do is "get rid of it", on the Home ribbon (near the center) click on that same symbol and you will "get rid of it". Click on it again and it will come back.

And to repeat another posters comment, it is called a "pilcrow".

Can you delete this symbol without changing the number of paragraphs? If so, this might mean that a “pilcrow” or “paragraph” symbol with code "182" got inserted in the document. Simply delete it with the Del or Backspace key depending on the cursor position next to it.

Why would you even want to delete it? (To my knowledge, you couldn't delete it anyway.) It does nothing to your file and, if you do not want to see it, simply click on it like I said previously and it will go away.

Irrespective of whether it is a non-printing non-textual paragraph end mark or a printing textual pilcrow symbol, both can be deleted/removed with the Del key.

Technically, no. Every ¶ represents the end of a paragraph - even an empty one. So deleting them reduces the number of paragraphs.
In most cases - but not all - you could, but have you thought about the consequences of doing so. For one thing, if it is a paragraph break, deleting it could make a thorough mess of the document's formatting. In any event, you can never delete the last one in the document, or the last one in a text box, etc.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thank you very much for your contribution, Macropod. For sure, I must sound so dumb that you think I cannot do my own thinking, and you need to correct each posting I make.

1. When I wrote “Can you delete this symbol without changing the number of paragraphs?”, of course I was suggesting experimenting with this. If the pesky symbol/character we are talking about can “technically” be deleted without changing the number of paragraphs, then it is a pilcrow symbol inserted as an ordinary printing character. And it can be deleted without changing the number of paragraphs.

2. You are just stating the obvious. Everybody knows that the last non-printing paragraph mark of a document cannot be deleted: In any case, MS Word won’t let you do it!

3. But there can be thousands of non-printing paragraph end marks within a single document. And these non-printing paragraph end marks can be deleted.

4. In most cases, deleting a non-printing paragraph end mark will not bring about the disastrous results that you suggest it would. It simply joins paragraphs that weren't joined previously. In any case, "Ctrl+Z" can quickly repair the damage, if any.

5. In any event, most non-printing paragraph end marks can technically be deleted, if we except the final paragraph mark of a document, and maybe also of a section. Whether it is advisable to do so is another matter. As is the question of why a pilcrow symbol could ruin anybody’s marriage or get anybody so upset…

Robert: there's no need to get snooty.

Your posts gave no indication that you had a clue what you were talking about and, even if you did, your posts were misleading for people who don't fit into your presumed "Everybody knows" category. The simple fact of the matter is that not everybody knows these things.

Some of what you call obvious are clearly anything but for the OP. Please bear in mind that people seek help with things for which the solutions aren't obvious to them.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Call me “snooty”!

If you honestly read my postings in this thread, you’ll notice that I first referred the OP to the article at http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm. Seriously, did this give you an indication that I did not know what I was talking about?

I wrote that these pilcrow symbols could be deleted. If we except the final paragraph mark of a document, they can be deleted. If I did not mention the final paragraph mark of a document, it was not to muddle things up more than they already were. But you obviously pounced on this and made your case rest on this alone.

If the OP had tried deleting that pesky pilcrow mark of his as I suggested, he would have found out if it was a printing or non-printing symbol. Things would have become clearer.

I once helped someone get rid of a pilcrow symbol which had been inserted as a printing character. That person did not understand why there was what looked like a paragraph end mark in the middle of one of his sentences. So I had every clue as to what I was talking about.

As I said, if you care to pay attention:
That is the crux of the matter. Discussion closed.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]