MS word. Non-breaking paragraph / hidden paragraph breaks

Question

OK, I'm writing a scientific report in Word. I have automatic figure numbering active which is being used in a table of figures at the start of the document.

Each figure has a label (automatically generated) and a short title, followed by a more lengthy description. I don't want the descriptions to end up in the table, so I've added a paragraph break between the title and description. I don't actually want a line break at this point, so I have hidden the paragraph mark via the fonts menu.

This means that a paragraph break appears when I have my formatting marks active, but is invisible when they are turned off (or when the document is printed). I would rather keep the formatting marks on (it makes the document much easier to edit) but not keep adding the extra line which would be invisible in the finished document - because it messes with the page numbering.

Is there any way of showing the formatting marks, without adding a line break at these hidden paragraphs?

Alternatively, is there a way of breaking a paragraph without also adding a line break?

Thanks!

Answer 1

So, it turns out what I needed was a "style separator" which is pretty damn arcane. In fact it is (apparently) undocumented. There is a command style-separator which is available to add to the quick access toolbar, or you can simply Ctrl + Alt + Enter to add one.

Inserting a style separator between the short caption and longer description restricts what ends up in the final table of figures at the front of the document, but doesn't add a paragraph break. NB it doesn't work within tables though, so you need to add it to text and then cut and paste the whole lot into a table.