Friday, March 26, 2010

Keyboard Shortcut of the Week

Show/Hide Formatting Marks

Showing Formatting Marks (also called “non-printing characters”) in Word is a valuable tool in determining the method required to modify formatting or to diagnose document problems. For example, can you tell whether the text below was formatted using tabs or a table to position the text?

How would you go about correcting what appears to be irregular alignment of centered text?

While seeing formatting marks is important, I don’t like to view them all the time. It makes reading the document for content difficult, and in some cases can change how the document appears to be paginated.

When I encounter a place in my document that looks unusual and I want to check it out, I just toggle formatting marks by pressing Ctrl + * (Shift + 8), see what’s up, then toggle them back off. (Please note when using this shortcut, the asterisk on the number pad does not work.)

1 comment:

Monica said...

Stacey - Thanks for this keyboard tip. I've always used the paragraph symbol icon, but much prefer the keyboard. Keep up the great work on your blog - I love it.