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[Solved] I have odd marks over all my documents

Posted: Thu May 22, 2025 10:40 pm
by Canna W
Hi,

I would be grateful for some help. I have some odd sort of formatting marks over all my documents, and would be grateful if someone could tell me how to return them to normal.

I use OpenOffice and Windows 11 on a desktop computer. This is what my documents look like:
https://imgur.com/a/7f7TrIz

Thank you!
cannaw.png
cannaw.png (26.94 KiB) Viewed 600 times

Re: I have odd marks over all my documents

Posted: Thu May 22, 2025 11:23 pm
by floris v
They are non-printing characters and are a very important utility while you work on your document. They tell you whether you ended a line with a paragraph break or a line break, for instance. Furthermore, they also remind you that your work isn't finished yet. Without those marks, your document may look pretty, and that might cheat you into believing that it's great, when in fact you could still improve it a lot.
That said, you can hide them by toggling View - Formatting marks or pressing Ctrl+F10.

Re: I have odd marks over all my documents

Posted: Fri May 23, 2025 9:27 am
by RoryOF
They allow one to see when there are strange formatting effects, such as wide spaces one can't account for; these are often caused by double space characters or sometimes a wrongly inserted tab. They don't print, but if one is doing meticulous formatting, such as for a printed book, they are of considerable help.

Many working on long documents will have these on all the time.

Re: I have odd marks over all my documents

Posted: Fri May 23, 2025 10:03 am
by RoryOF
Go to your first post in the thread, select the pencil icon and when the posting opens in an edit screen, add [Solved] at the start of the Subject line. Then press Submit button.

Re: I have odd marks over all my documents

Posted: Fri May 23, 2025 12:21 pm
by Canna W
RoryOF wrote: Fri May 23, 2025 10:03 am Go to your first post in the thread, select the pencil icon and when the posting opens in an edit screen, add [Solved] at the start of the Subject line. Then press Submit button.
Ah, Thank you!