Non-printing character in word processors

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Non-printing characters or formatting marks are characters for content designing in word processors, which are not displayed at printing. It is also possible to customize their display on the monitor. The most common non-printable characters in word processors are pilcrow, space, non-breaking space, tab character etc.[1][2]

Characters

To display characters on the monitor screen in Microsoft Word (Home tab) or OpenOffice.org and its derivatives (upper panel), press the icon . The following symbols will be displayed.

  • Space – each pressing of the key will be displayed as ·
  • Non-breaking space (°) is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position.
  • Pilcrow ().
  • Line break () breaks the current line without new paragraph. It puts lines of text close together.
  • Tab character is used to align text horizontally to the next tab stop.
  • End-of-cell and end-of row markers (¤) appear automatically in each box when display of non-printable characters turned on.
  • Soft hyphen or nonbreaking hyphen (-) is a hidden separator for hyphenation in the places specified by the user, regardless of the automatic hyphenation.[3]
  • ············Page Break············, ::::::::::Section Break:::::::::: or ············Column Break············

.

Key combinations

Name Common view Common key
combinationsfor
Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org (from 3.0)
Key combination
in other word processors
Windows
Alt Key Codes[4]
Unicode name Unicode code (HEX) Unicode code (DEC)
Space · Space SPACE 0x20 0032
Non-breaking
space
° Ctrl+Shift+Space Ctrl+Space for FrameMaker,
LyX (non-Mac),
OpenOffice.org (before 3.0), WordPerfect
Alt+0+1+6+0 or Alt+2+5+5 (not always works) NO-BREAK SPACE 00A0 0160
Pilcrow Enter Alt+0182
or Alt+20 (on number keyboard).
Line
break
Shift+Enter
Tab
character
Tab
Soft
hyphen
¬ Ctrl+- 2011
Page
break
···Page Break··· Ctrl+Enter

See also

References

  1. ^ support.office.com: Show or hide formatting marks
  2. ^ Onlyoffice.com:Show/hide nonprinting characters
  3. ^ support.office.com: Insert a hyphen
  4. ^ "Windows Alt Key Codes". Penn State University. 2010. Archived from the original on 2016-11-02. Retrieved 2016-11-05.
Esc F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 PrtScn/
SysRq
Scroll
Lock
Pause/
Break
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Insert Home PgUp Num
Lock
Delete End PgDn 7 8 9 +
4 5 6
1 2 3 Enter
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Del