Backspace to Delete Paragraph Mark Changes Formatting

ID: Q105776

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

If you position the insertion point to the right of a paragraph mark and press BACKSPACE, Word for Windows deletes the paragraph mark and merges the text from that paragraph with the paragraph following the insertion point. By design, Word applies the style of the second paragraph to the merged paragraph.

The following two examples illustrate this behavior:

Example 1

Paragraph 1 is formatted with the Heading 1 style, and Paragraph 2 is formatted with the Heading 2 style. If you position the insertion point to the right of the paragraph mark in Paragraph 1 and press BACKSPACE, Word merges Paragraph 1 with Paragraph 2 and applies the Heading 2 style to the merged paragraph.

Example 2

Paragraph 1 is formatted with the Heading 3 style, and Paragraph 2 is formatted with the Normal style. If you backspace over the Paragraph 1 paragraph mark, Word merges the two paragraphs and formats it with the Normal style.

MORE INFORMATION

This behavior differs from that of previous versions of Word for Windows and Word for the Macintosh, in which you cannot delete a paragraph mark or remove style formatting by pressing BACKSPACE.

KBCategory: kbusage kbprb KBSubCategory: Additional query words: 6.0 winword macword word6

Version           : 6.0
Platform          : WINDOWS

Last Reviewed: February 5, 1998