If you've ever created a complex Word document, you've probably run into those frustrating problems where you just can't seem to get a bullet point or paragraph of text to line up properly, or where text keeps breaking onto a different page when it should.

To fix these types of problems, you sometimes have to manually edit the formatting of the document. In Word, the text of the document is stored separately from the formatting. This is good because it makes it easier to edit the formatting without losing any text.

In this article, I'm going to tell you how to show formatting marks in Word documents. These formatting marks include tabs, hyphens, spaces, paragraph marks, hidden text, page breaks, etc. I'll also discuss another feature in Word called Reveal Formatting, which allows you to see all the formatting applied to selected text.

There are two ways to show formatting or paragraph marks in Word: using the button on the Paragraph ribbon or by going to Word – Options. The latter method always shows the formatting marks for all documents. The button lets you toggle the display of the marks on or off and it only affects the currently open documents.