How (once showing) do you highlight formatting marks quickly in order to, for example, delete them or copy their formatting? Many thanks
Formatting marks are shown after enabling View>Formatting Marks.
To “delete a formatting mark”, put your cursor before or after it and hit respectively Del or Bksp just like your would type your text. You can’t delete the very last paragraph mark.
In Writer, you don’t “copy formatting” with copy/paste of a paragraph mark like you’d do it in M$ Word. You apply formatting by choosing a paragraph style in the paragraph menu. The style is effective on all paragraphs in the selection.
When you copy/paste a formatting mark, you not only copy its formatting, you also create a new paragraph corresponding to the mark. Note that formatting configuration is rather elaborate in Writer (and this gives it its power) as you’ll forward the full formatting state of the source location. This state contains paragraph style, charactyer style and whatever you directly added over the other two.
From your question, I understand you’re discovering Writer. Its underlying principles are different from those in M$ Word. To avoid “surprises”, I recommend you read the Writer Guide, particularly the chapters about styles.
When posting here, always mention OS name, LO version and save format (.odt vs. .doc(x)). Reliability and repetitivity is guaranteed only when saving native, i.e. .odt.