Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Inserting a Section Mark.

Inserting a Section Mark

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 17, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


In legal and scholarly documents, it is sometimes necessary to use a character commonly known as a section mark. This character looks like a stylized S with a small circle in the middle of it. This character is not available from the keyboard, but can be inserted in a document in two ways. The first is to hold down the Alt key and type the numbers 0167 on the numeric keypad. The second method involves these steps:

  1. Choose Symbol from the Insert menu. Word displays the Symbol dialog box.
  2. Click on the Special Characters tab. (See Figure 1.)
  3. Figure 1. The Special Characters tab of the Symbol dialog box.

  4. Choose Section from the list of characters.
  5. Click on Insert. The symbol appears in your document at the insertion point.
  6. Click on Close.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (539) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Inserting a Section Mark.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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