I’ve finally figured out the most maddening problem in Microsoft Word. I never could get rid of these lines of small squares that reached from margin to margin.

Nothing would dent them. I couldn’t highlight them, delete them, or overwrite them. The only solution was to erase the whole passage that contained them, and type from scratch. Sometimes that failed. They spread like rabbits.

Here’s the secret. That line is the bottom border on the paragraph immediately above. So you have to attack it in that paragraph. Here’s how.

Highlight the whole paragraph before the line, even if it’s just one carriage return. Click FORMAT, then BORDERS AND SHADING, then BORDERS (1). Under APPLY TO, click PARAGRAPH (2). Under SETTINGS (3), look at the bottom item: CUSTOM (4). That’s the baddie. See that little line of four dots? You have to kill that. Click NONE (5) at the top of…