Can someone explain the following: 1. When I press the “P” (i.e., the Paragraph-type of “P”) button to reveal spacing in a document, sometimes between sentences there appears a degree symbol adjacent the “dot” indicating a space-bar space. What does this symbol mean, and how does one insert it? Or, is it automatically inserted by the word processing software? I can’t seem to figure out the rhyme or reason to the purpose and use of this symbol.
Also, when inserting a graphic, what does the anchor symbol mean? Is it trying to tell me something, and is there something more to know about this symbol - perhaps to improve how I manipulate images in my document?
If the “degree symbol” is what I think it is, it’s a nonbreaking space, which means that Word won’t allow a line break where it occurs. It can be handy in certain contexts, but most people would probably find those contexts to be rare. You can insert one with Control-Shift-Spacebar. You can also end up with them if someone has copied and pasted blocks of text from a different application.
You can get rid of them simply by simply deleting them like any other character. If your document has a lot of them, do find-and-replace operation. Search for a regular space-bar-created space and replace with the same.
I use the non-breaking space all the time in legal opinions, since there is a space between the section abbreviation and the section number: “s. 259”. Also use it when referring to a judge by their abbreviation: 'White J."
The Anchor I don’t understand. It sometimes screws up the formatting, and I can’t figure out how to delete it.
The anchor is where the graphic is anchored. It will stay with the anchor as text is added or removed. If you delete the text with the anchor, the graphic will be deleted, too.