Difference between Enter and Shift + Enter in Microsoft Word

Pressing Enter in MS-Word while typing will usually give you a new paragraph. This can be visualised by touching the Show/Hide hidden formatting symbols button in the HOME tab. This is the button which looks like an inverted P.

This is also shown with the star mark in the figure above.

If you want to start a new paragraph, it is fine to press ENTER and be done with it, but what if you only want to start a new line and not a new paragraph??

What is the difference you ask, look at the picture below:

As you can see above the difference between starting a paragraph and starting a new line is the amount of spacing!

Use SHIFT +ENTER to create a new line, and the symbol for the new line is the symbol on your Enter key.

This is called the line break symbol and the inverted P symbol is the paragraph mark or the Pilcrow.
Within a long paragraph the Word automatically introduces linebreaks depending on the page size, font size, and justification settings.