Removal of these along with the rest would alter your text and you’d not be able to distinguish an actual paragraph end from an unnecessary hard return. Now, there may be some places where you actually want to retain paragraph marks, like at the end of a true sentence. In the 'Replace with' text box, insert the character you want to replace it with. However, you could also just insert '^p' in the 'Find what' textbox to save time. 'Paragraph mark' will be shown at the top of this list.
Therefore, you would need to open the Find and Replace dialog box, click on 'More' and select 'Special'.Ī list of characters and symbols that you can find and replace in any line is shown here. Since it is a special display character and hence not available on most keyboards, you can't simply type in the paragraph mark inside the text box. Alternatively, you can use 'Ctrl+F' for 'Find' and 'Ctrl+H' for 'Replace.' You can remove paragraph marks in Word by using the 'Find' and 'Replace' commands, which are present on the right side of the 'Home' tab. Remove paragraph marks in Word - Find & replace paragraph marks Cleaning the document in this way is tedious, though, and there is a simpler way of going about with it, as we explain in detail below. You can edit the text by manually deleting the extra hard returns and adding a space or any other punctuation you prefer. One direct way of removing paragraph marks in Word is to do it manually. You could also invoke a soft return via the keyboard shortcut 'Shift + Enter'. Soft returns are represented by an arrow which faces downwards then to the left side. However, when word wrapping is enabled, soft returns make sure that your formatting remains intact. Hard returns tend to create all sorts of errors in the formatting of content. With this function enabled, you can see where hard returns occur and spot where the text breaks at the wrong places. This function displays all the characters that won't be printed (hidden characters). This is called the 'Show/ Hide Paragraph mark' option.Īlternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut 'Ctrl + *' to enable it. You will find a pilcrow as shown below, select it by clicking on it. To do so, go to the 'Home' tab -> 'Paragraph' group. You can choose to display paragraph marks in your Word document. How can you display paragraph marks in a document?Ī backward 'P' symbol (¶), known as a 'pilcrow', is used to represent a hard return. With a soft return, words that go beyond the right end of the text-box are automatically transferred to the next line, without having to press Enter. On the other hand, soft returns allow you to continue typing without needing to press enter to go to the next line. The enter key forces the line to break to the next paragraph. Pressing the Enter key while editing the document results in the word processor inserting a hard return.
#Remove paragraph spacing in word how to
You can also skip directly to How to remove paragraph marks in Word. This will help you churn out well-formatted docs every time with ease. So, we've compiled the below points to help you understand more about paragraph marks in Word and how to remove them. Even if you have encountered them for the first time, it's likely that their use has left you confused. If your job heavily revolves around writing or formatting content, you might be well acquainted with how unnecessary paragraph marks become a nuisance.