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MICROSOFT WORD FORMATTING MARKS BLACK SQUARE SERIES

Word displays the Style Inspector dialog, with the underlying style of the paragraph containing your cursor, and any directly applied formatting: At the bottom of the Styles pane, click Style Inspector. Click the dialog launcher,, at the bottom right of the Styles gallery on the Home ribbon tab. Fortunately, there is the Style Inspector. Similarly, the more that After spacing exceeds Before spacing, the more Word displays the black square below the vertical center of the line:Īlthough Word is a WYSIWYG (‘What you see is what you get’) word processor, it can be difficult to see which style has been applied to a paragraph, and if the paragraph formatting has been modified, i.e. The more that Before spacing exceeds After spacing, the more Word displays the black square above the vertical center of the line:

(This is a more robust way to add space before and after paragraphs compared to simple pressing Enter to add a blank line!) If there’s an equal amount of space Before and After, Word displays the black square near the vertical center of the first line of the paragraph. Select Indents and Spacing in the Paragraph dialog, and then adjust the Before and After spacing:

To apply spacing, place the cursor in the paragraph, and then click the dialog launcher,, at the bottom right of the P aragraph group on the Home ribbon tab, or right-click and then select Paragraph. The position of the mark relative to the first line of the paragraph is dependent on the amount of spacing before and after the paragraph. The Significance of the Paragraph Property Mark’s Position Select Line and Page Breaks in the resulting Paragraph dialog:īy default, Word’s Heading styles have Keep with next applied, so you will see the paragraph property mark next to each paragraph with one of those styles. To apply any of these settings, click the cursor anywhere in the paragraph, and then click the dialog launcher,, at the bottom right of the P aragraph group on the Home ribbon tab, or right-click and then select Paragraph.

Suppress line numbers: when line numbering is in force, ensures line numbers are not displayed on this paragraph.

Keep lines together: ensures the paragraph does not split across a page boundary.

Page break before: ensures the paragraph always starts on a new page.

Keep with next: ensures the paragraph is always on the same page as the following paragraph.

The square appears whenever one or more of the following are applied to a paragraph: I call this small black square the ‘Paragraph Properties Mark,’ although there would appear to be no evidence that this is the official Microsoft name for it. Nor will you find anything about it in the Microsoft Knowledge Base-normally a treasure trove of information. So, what does this small black square signify, and does its position relative to the paragraph text mean anything? Like so many features in Word, and probably in other Microsoft products, you won’t find anything about this black square in the Help files. Here’s how it appears if you press Ctrl+*, or click Show/Hide ¶ in the Paragraph group on the Home ribbon tab: This was based on a question from a Perspective reader regarding the meaning of the small black square that Microsoft Word will display to the left of some paragraphs in a document when you have formatting marks turned on.

MICROSOFT WORD FORMATTING MARKS BLACK SQUARE SERIES

In 2006, I wrote an article for my Wordman’s Production Corner series in the Perspective newsletter, published by the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), titled The Curse of the Black Spot. The small black square to the left of some paragraphs in a Microsoft Word document, aka the Paragraph Properties Mark, can tell you a lot about the formatting applied to those paragraphs.īy Dick Eassom, CF APMP Fellow (aka Wordman)