Did you know that a paragraph in MS Word doesn't necessarily mean complete sentences or any of the other rules your English teacher taught you?

Well, to Word, it doesn't.

I'm sure any English teacher would disagree, but here's the scoop!

Word considers a paragraph to be the text between two paragraph marks.

So, what are paragraph marks?

Well, they look like this:

You've never seen that in your Word documents, have you?

No, I'm sure you haven't, but I assure you, they're there. They're just one of the many hidden marks Word puts in to indicate viagra online generic spaces, enters, tabs, etc. You may not see them, but they do exist.

(It's possible to have Word display those marks by clicking the button on the Standard toolbar that contains the paragraph symbol. Or, if you're using Word 2007, you'll find the button on the Home Ribbon under the Paragraph section. In any version, it's a toggle button, so just click on it once to display the hidden marks and once more to hide them again).

Basically, Word inserts a paragraph mark any time you hit the Enter key.

For example, if you're making a list of items, each item becomes its own paragraph every time you hit Enter.

So, why do you care?

Allow me to tell you! There are a lot of instructions and references to a paragraph in Word. As I've worked with different people, I've noticed one thing: they usually only see a paragraph in the traditional format. Because of that, single word lists just don't register in their thinking process.

The result?

Put simply, they're often confused with instructions. It's hard to follow instructions when you don't know the definitions of the terms (at least Word's definitions).

So, now that we're clear on what Word means, keep an eye out for tomorrow's tip, because I'm going to show you some cool tricks you can do with your paragraphs. Stay tuned!