Till yesterday my Word 2003 was working perfectly and now if I start a new Blank Document, I see a special symbol automatically (Paragraph (pilcrow)) ¶, and when press space I get dotted instead of spaces. why these being used?


When I open an another document, that will open document with special and changed format and became unreadable document. why these are happening suddenly? what do I need to get rid of these special characters?

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 #.

Showing non-printing formatting marks in Microsoft Word
What do all those funny marks, like the dots between the words in my document, and the square bullets in the left margin, mean?

These do not print. They are there to help you figure out why Word is doing what it is doing with your text. I generally keep them turned on.
The display is toggled with Alt+* (Alt+Shift+8).

This is shortcut is available in Word 2000-2016.

This forum & Googling has solved my issues with word. Thanks Charles!

You are welcome. Sorry we didn't catch this for the original poster.