Those strange ¶ symbols are called pilcrow signs or paragraph signs and they show the end of paragraphs. They’re useful to see when you’re formatting and editing e-books and don’t print at all, but could be distracting.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to remove them.
- Click the top menu item Tools->Options
- Click View
- Look for ‘Formatting Marks’, and uncheck the option ‘All’
- Click OK
Or for newer versions…
- Click the top menu item ‘Review’
- Look for ‘Show Markup’ and click
- Look for ‘Formatting’ and uncheck
OR
- Click View
- Move down to Toolbars and choose Standard, for standard toolbar
- You should see a Pilcrow icon on the toolbar that you can click to either show or hide
Finally, Windows 10 makes it much easier to find. Just click the ‘Home’ tab, and you should see the Pilcrow icon somewhere near the top middle. You can click it to turn it off and click it again to turn it on.
Hope this helps 🙂
Anna Pampani says
Thank you .It worked great.
lucarinf says
So glad it helped 🙂
nur says
thank you for the help!
LANNY WONG says
Hi there
YES, IT WORKS WELL IN MY WINDOWS 10. THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE ANSWER.
Keep it up!
REGARDS
Lanny Wong
pk says
It would be better if you can attach screenshots either
Tanuj Kumar says
It didnt work. I tried uncheking formatting but whenever i am restarting word it comes again. i didnt evenn go when i uncheked formatting. i also tried uninstalling and restalling office.
please guide. it distracts me from working
lucarinf says
My apologies, I haven’t been on this blog for quite awhile. If you’re still having that problem, maybe the information on this page might help.
https://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/word-help/show-or-hide-formatting-marks-HA010370559.aspx
To turn off formatting marks:
Hope this helps.
brian says
Great, your info was great, was easy and worked. Thanks alot, you saved me. I had this symbol ¶ added into all my documents. Thanks again
Toks says
Thanks a bunch for the info. It was very helpful and saved much needed time today…
Sijal Baral says
Thanks lucarinf none of the idea above worked for me but yours worked.
HL says
Thanks a lot for the info..!!!!
anonymus says
thanks dear
Aashish says
http://raaviblog.com/remove-strange-symbols-%C2%B6-characters-ms-word-document-2/
THIS LIKE WILL HELP FOR SURE…!!!
Asif says
Hiii…
I am getting that strange symbol in my microsoft word 13 and I still have it. I have tried those steps that you have suggested. But it didnt work for me 🙁 . Could someone help me?
lucarinf says
Have you tried this? Maybe the information on this page might help.
https://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/word-help/show-or-hide-formatting-marks-HA010370559.aspx
To turn off formatting marks:
Click the File tab.
Under Help, click Options.
Click Display.
Under ‘Always show these formatting marks on the screen’, uncheck the boxes for any formatting marks that you do not want to show.
Hope this helps.
Vijay Avarapu says
thanks alot for ur blog and to u too.. 😀
Aziz says
Hi there every body
Thanks you very much, this solution has solved my issue.
Tarun says
I like this information. It was precise, systematized and to the points. Great work!
pujari says
usefull..thnaks
Prasanna says
This article helped a lot. Thanks a ton !
andy says
Thank you !!!!!
Mekala says
Office 2013 – Home tab there is ¶ character before style box, if you click that accidental, this weird characters appear. Unchecked ¶ to remove this mark.
sandy says
For word 2007,
Go to Home –> Under paragraph tab –> Uncheck the symbol which is appearing
In my case this symbol “¶ ” was appearing.
hmt0211 says
tq so much as I eventually can remove all these kind of weird symbols alry ^^
robinson says
Thanks for the help 🙂
deb says
Fantastic! Took 2 seconds to clear it. Thanks
Bridgette says
Great! this really helps those who don’t know much about software. I highly approve.
Bimal says
Thanks
paul says
Hi!
Do you know those little white rectangles that you have to fill in when doing a grammar exercise online? I need to know how to remove them using Find/Replace but I don’t know how they are named. Can you help me?
Thanks!!!
Ahmed nabil says
u did really helped me , thanks alot 🙂
Saravanan says
Thank you
abdullah says
You saved my life.
Thanks a lot dude <3
Luis Arteaga says
You save my life buddy, i even uninstall Ms office and reinstall it again because the symbols i was getting, no way to get rid of them, you save my life, thanks a lot.
Joe says
Thanks for this I must have keyed in a shortcut by accident and was tearing my hair out trying to remove them.
Edmund says
Thanks
the below worked like a Bomb, how did it get there in the first place?
Click the top menu item Tools->Options
Click View
Look for ‘Formatting Marks’, and uncheck the option ‘All’
Click OK
Indika says
Thx you so much….
Rakesh Sharma says
This page is very helpful and took away my big headache. Thank you.
Karen says
Thank you. so helpful. solve my problem 🙂
sridhar says
excellent . to the point.
Manjula says
Thanks a lot it was very helpful
Dan q says
none of this worked
Raji says
nice. it helps. thanks.
Ankit says
Great information but in my MS Office word 2010 it didn;t worked I tried all the three ways
lucarinf says
Is it under the Home tab? You might see the pilcrow ¶ sign close to the middle top. Clicking it turns it on and off. Hope this helps 🙂
Giribabu says
Even i faced same issue…In Home Tab –> middle top (you can see pilcrow symbol select/deselect it’ll disappear…Good it helps for me….
Thanks lucarinf
dennis says
another easy way to removes these annoying icons is to open the document (microsoft 2010 version) select home page, have a look across the top of the page, where you see all the different actions you can perform, like font size, type, centre,align text etc and you will see the actual icon, simply check it and boosh, it’s gone. simples.
pramodh says
really help full bro nice job keep it up….
Music Man says
Perfect fix. How did the symbol get there in the first place? I didn’t change any settings in MS Word 2003 and when I opened an old saved file today there it was.
It was very annoying but I am grateful for this blog which took care of the issue.
Joe says
Thanks for the help here, every word document I had ever created had a pilcrow symbol in it… there gone now thanks to you folks!!
Khark says
but i am using office 2003. but i am not able to remove this b&*lshit sign.. Plzz help..
lucarinf says
Could Alt+v+s help to toggle the paragraph marks? Someone else suggested this keyboard shortcut for Word 2003. Hope it helps.
Alexa says
Thank you. I was crying.
Ujjwal says
Thanks. This was very useful..
Abhisek says
Thank You very much…. It helped
Chester says
Thanks alot!!!
Shahbaz Khan says
MS Word 2013 navigate to home tab and find q symbol and click on it then it will be remove.
Miss SHOOSH says
THIS WORKED FOR ME ON MACBOOK PRO!!!
Thank you so much!
Aung Thu says
Thanks a million!!!!
Marty says
None of these worked, and I want to smash my computer.
How many sheer hours, days, weeks, months do we spend trying to get these stupid machines to just WORK –
WHY does WORD assume I want these little markings? Who uses them, and why?
WHY WHY WHY WHY must anyone who tries to use a computer be required not to edit their photos, not to type a document, not to use various apps, but instead to waste their lives TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG AND JUST FIX IT.
Instead of googling “Funny marks on word,” coming here, going down the list and the MARKS ARE STILL THERE, and finally you say to yourself, “Ok, the document has to be written and printed, so i guess I HAVE to have these marks.”
20 minutes of your life wasted – AGAIN. Beautiful day outside? No, you will waste your life trying to get the computer to do what typewriters did just fine – “I need to type a document, I scroll a piece of paper into the typewriter, I type what I need, pull out the paper and walk away, onto other things.”
Instead, it’s open WORD and – SURPRISE! Little marks on your paper that won’t go away and YOU DIDN’T WANT THEM THERE TO BEGIN WITH.
Same thing with looking up things on Youtube. “You will watch this stupid commercial for something you haven’t the slightest interest in buying.”
SIGH
SIGH
SIGH
SIGH
SIGH
8:30 AM and I’m already angry….
SIGH
tom says
i understand perfectly. the Pilcrow is our friend but can also be our worse enemy. it can leap from every directions. Hide, scurry, appear and disappear without a warning. What to do under those auspicious situations?
I may or may not have an answer for you. but try we may, and perhaps, God willing we’ll see the last of Pilcrow. that damning gnome from the depth of the deepest hard drive.
it is true, sometimes we must simply accept reality for what it is, cruel, unexpected, and incomprehensible. we live in a world where it is impossible to get away from the ordinary and extraordinary frustrations of ordinary experiences.
MS Word is meant to test our God given patience. the kind of virtue that most of us possess but few can master. where is this trial and tribulation going to take us is anyone’s guess, we need only to see what it represents: a supernatural plan that stares us in the eyes everyday till the end of days.
the long, bony, cold fingers are on our pulse following the rhythm of our insoluble emotions. wisdom, passion, action, have little use under these obsessive circumstances. only the Almighty has the final answer. the rest of must must live inconsolably our entire existence with the perennial Pilcrow.
lucarinf says
Computer frustrations, we’ve all been there 😉 But if you print your word document, those funny marks won’t get printed, or at least they’re not supposed to. Hope this works.
G Wilson says
Thank you very much – those pilcow things were only on my document for a minute and driving me crazy!
Tauseef says
Thank you very much, it really helped. those annoying marks are gone now.
shweta says
Thanks a lot…I was really struggling with this one…You saved lot of my time….
Mustafa says
Thank you so much…
helped me alot…
cml says
You solved my problem!
Thank you so much!
D says
I am not technologically savvy, but your instructions helped me fix, in my opinion, the problem of what I call the little backwards P. Thank you so much!!!!
JK says
Thank you Hamesh! I was going bonkers getting those marks off my docs!
Inaaya says
Thank you so much. I was stuck badly with a report on the word doc. This was very helpful 🙂
ram says
PRESS Ctrl + Shift + 8
Tanuj Sood says
Thank you sooo much… It was really irritating!!!
Carlos Carpio says
thakyou.. youre the best
Jacqueline Stigman says
Hi! I’m suddenly getting an UNFILLED in pilcrow in my word 7 document and I cannot remove it. Have never seen it before and if affects my ability to format the doc. It has resisted every attempt of mine to remove them. They are cropping up in place of the usual filled in pilcrow. Can you help? I’ve searched online but see nothing about this symbol. Thanks!
lucarinf says
Hello Jacqueline, Just found this info from Microsoft on How to reset character and style formatting in Word . Just select the text, and press CTRL+SPACEBAR (in Windows) or COMMAND+SHIFT+Z (on the Macintosh). Hope this helps. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/123302
Gmarc says
THANK YOU!!! I have been agonizing over this…fixed. No more weird symbols!BAM
Mary Beth says
THANK YOU!
Every once in a while I hit something accidentally and these show up. I know what they’re for, but I can never remember how to get rid of them. And “Help” never helps because I don’t know what to call the pilcrow icons. LOL!
Thanks for understanding my odd question!
Efe says
Thanks for your post. Really helpful…
Mitchell says
Pesky pilcrow. Thx!
satendra says
Thanks a lot
Noelani says
I have Windows 10 and tried this but it didn’t work. I used the route Review–> Show Markup–>Formatting
Any other suggestions?
lucarinf says
Try HOME instead. Near the top middle, you should see the PILCROW symbol. Clicking it will turn it ON or OFF. Hope this helps.
priyanka says
Helped alot.
David Head says
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
One click did it. ….. I have no idea how it got started, but I sure am glad to be rid of all those extra marks.
Shilpa says
Thx ….:)
Nitesh says
Thank you straight to the point.
stabsen says
Your suggestion is completely wrong.
All you need is the keyboard shortcut for showing and hiding the symbols: Ctrl + Shift + 8
ashwin kumar kancherla says
sir,
thank you very much. your advice worked.
Eduardo says
u are a wizard! thank you
Girish says
Thank you so much LucarInfo.. It helped me a lot..
ayushi says
thank you 🙂
Johanna says
Thank you.
Daya says
Thanks so much! It worked!!! Yay!
Nemala says
Thank you so much. Your how-to-solve-the-issue info is clear and precise. It solved my problem. I was definitely distracted with these symbols everywhere my document. Learnt something new today. Thanks to you :-).
arabia says
thank you so much..
Aliya Khan says
Hahaha it drived me crazy..at first i thought i had a virus ..
i had to submit my personal statement and today was the deadline and these symbols were driving me nuts. Luckily I didnt try re formatting my hard disk thinking it was a virus that took over my word doc .
moi says
Thanks a million!
Such an annoying feature if you accidentally turn it on…like moi
😉
Kendrick says
Million Thanks to you!
Mark says
Thank you so much, the pilcrows were driving me insane.
hbteodora says
Ctr+Shift+*
Deb says
Thank you! That was horrible! All set now.
tom says
ok
jvc says
Thanks a ton dude…. pilcrow made me nervous.lol
Beah says
Problem solved. Thank you Eric
Zeharan says
Simply press Ctrl + Shift + 8
beans says
Thank You!! your blog helped me to remove the irritating ¶ symbol
Stephen Murphy says
what is the symbol that looks like the Enter symbol sort of like a backward “L” with an arrow on the horizontal leg?
Azz says
Thank you so much, it was really very helpful.
Meredith says
I went through all of these and it was the last answer. It worked a charm! Thank you! It was making me crazy!
FAHAD VHORA says
to remove first press ctrl+p then go into option and unmark formating option
John says
I am not sure how I enabled this … but popped up all of a sudden … and Thanks to your Blog post Saved my Nerve … was going crazy. Thanks again! 🙂
Jatin says
Thank You!! your blog helped me to remove the irritating ¶ symbol
BERHANU says
thank you it helped me.
Dianne says
A very big thank you. Well explained & not drawn out. I was freaking out!! Happy again!!
WAYNE says
THANK YOU GOD!
zargari says
Oh man, Thanks a lot
Jon says
ctrl+shift+8 will fix this.
I couldn’t get any of these suggestions to work but found that this shortcut turns the characters on and off. It’s usually done by mistake when using an asterisk.
Justina says
THANK YOU!
Adina says
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD I WAS LOSING MY DAMN MIND WITH THAT PILCROW THINGY! Thank youuuuu so muchhhh
Carlos says
I was losing my mind until I found you, please don’t leave me, you are the only one good to me, a God send, a miracle, a ……..I’m sorry, I was really losing my freaking mind. In all seriousness…..Thank you so much.
Mya says
Thanks so much! This helped better than any other site! Great job! I like all of the different ways to do this! 🙂
Brian says
Cheers, that was driving me crazy !
keles Ed says
Very helpful even to somebody that doesn’t know how to type.
johaina says
tnx. its HELP A LOT….
David Mirada says
I have been trying to find the fix for this for like an hour, and i found it thanks for the helpful info <3
Lee says
Thanks… worked when I went to home drop down on Windows 10
Arpith says
Thank you very much, so much annoying to see that symbol
Kojo says
This is really cool. Worked so well.
Sobalaje says
Thank you so much, this information is so precise. It solved my encounter with the pilcrow icon.
Vikas Patil says
Thank you,Himesh
Your trick worked.
Pranav Tallewar says
Just disable Paragraph Mark ( ¶) from Home Menu in Word 2013.
Shilpa says
Thank you so much
Shibu Sugathan says
Very helpful. Thank you.
Elena Putere says
Great work! Very systematic and helpul!
d david says
Thank You so much. That pilcrow icon drove me nuts, tried everything from uninstalling word, deleting registry keys, etc.
Nothing worked but your advice. Thank You, Thank You.
Tiger Eyes says
It worked! Thank you so much!!
MMW says
Thank you, more than I can say. Instructions was very detailed and easy to follow.
You Rock!
Kalesh.H says
Thank You So much.. Valued Information. Keep going..
Murunga Nyongesa says
Thank you so much
Juhi Batra says
Thanks a lot to you. I was very nervous seeing this strange symbol all over my document. You saved me. Thanks a lot:)
Anie says
Omg I thought I would never manage to correct this and submit my 22 page 4356 word lab report with this looking. THANKS AA LOOT!
ankur sinha says
Simply press the button with that symbol to disable it.
Nity. says
That’s awesome…was so stuck. God bless.
Bruce Collier says
Yes! Thanks
SRIRANGAM BHAVANI says
thanks a lot for good explanation
Medha says
This guide worked for me. Thanks!
Pug Barrett says
Helped a lot!! I found it up there in Home. ty
Gigliola Fratini says
thanks!
Aditi Bir says
You can also remove the symbol from the Home section.Just before the styles , you have the symbol displayed. Click on the symbol , and it will disappear from the document.
Hope this was helpful.
CMS says
Great.
Worked perfectly.
I must have clicked the pilcrow sign by mistake.
Thank you
Glenae says
Thank you very much. Your info was better than Google!
Shola says
Hello and thanks for the information…
I tried and it worked…
However, i suddenly realized all my documents now have the pilcrow mark on them…
Do i have to do it one by one or is there a way to remove from all the documents?
Thanks.
Sol says
Thank you… It works…. I thought it was a virus that cause my word document a lot of garbage symbol.. It helps a lot…. Thanks to your blog….God bless…
Nokiaboss says
Very Useful…Issue resolved from the first option…Great
David E says
Thanks a lot mate!
Fixed!
Greatly appreciated!
Keep safe where ever you are.
Cheers,
David
jana says
hello.ma word is 2007. I have try evrything you said.,didn’t work.Your help plzzz.stil so annot.i cn’t type proper;y
F*** says
this was nice and helpful thank u
Mona Liza Pecito says
Thank you it can help. My temper was going to high and then searching google and found your post about my problem. ?