The paragraph mark (P) contains all the formatting instructions for the preceding paragraph. It is also advisable to always have this on as it will help you to understand the formatting by displaying any non-printable characters. The paragraph mark () contains all the formatting instructions for the preceding paragraph. (Tools > Options > View), select Tab characters & paragraphs from the Non printing characters Always have the paragraph marks displayed. Paragraph marks contain most of the information used by Word to control fonts, formatting, tabs stops, lines, boxes, shading, styles, picture locations, line spacing, numbering and much more.

The paragraph is a character just like all the others and therefore has a font, colour, paragraph spacing etc and can also be cut, copies and pasted just like all the other characters. You can enter a paragraph mark into a document by pressing Enter. The number of paragraph marks in a document is equal to the number of paragraphs in the document.

In Word the definition of a paragraph is the paragraph mark plus all the characters that precede the paragraph mark up to but not including the previous paragraph mark.