It seems my issues are similar to above post.
My MS Office Pro Word started showing all these paragraph symbols in all my word documents 10/26/2015. After several times of Googling this issue with no resolution, so I'm here on the office forum. I did a total uninstall via control panel, programs and features; reinstalled everything, but still not working. The symbol in the standard tool bar at top does nothing when turned off or on but add a period instead of space. I've copied and pasted a sample in a word document. Also when trying to insert a page number, it only shows (page), no #.