"Murray" wrote:
i know that they can be removed by clicking on the 'emphasis mark' icon in
the extended formatting toolbar, however it seems to be set to come on by
default. If anyone knows of a way to get this off i would appreciate the
help.


Hi Murray,

You can remove them with ResetFont (Ctrl+Spacebar).

If they keep turning up, maybe they are in the definition of one of your
styles?
If you find some style that always produces emphasis marks if you apply that
style, put the cursor in some text formatted in that style, open the VBA
editor (Alt+F11), immediate window (Ctrl+G), and type or paste

Selection.Style.Font.EmphasisMark=wdEmphasisMarkNo ne

Hit the Return key at the end of the line, and emphasis marks should no
longer be part of the style definition.

Regards,
Klaus