Word displaying arrows for tabs, periods for space bar

The reason is due to “Show/Hide” icon. When you click on this icon your keyboard starts displaying arrows, periods and other strange characters. To undo this feature, you have to click one more time on that icon. Please visit the below web link to know where you can locate it and also to disable it:

Article Title: Show / Hide Button in Microsoft Word

http://www.officearticles.com/word/show-hide_button_in_microsoft_word.htm

Article Title: What do all those funny marks, like the dots between the words in my document, and the square bullets in the left margin, mean?

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm
If you are unable to find the “Show/Hide” icon mentioned in first web site, then please follow the below steps to disable this feature:

1) Start Word program.

2) Click on the Tools menu at the top of your Word screen. (Tools is located along with File, Edit, Help, Windows, etc menu)

3) Select “Options” from the drop down menu to get a new window the same name.

4) You will get several tabs like; Security, Edit, Print, Save, General, View etc.

5) Click on “View” tab. Under “Formatting marks” frame unselect all the options and click on OK button make the save the changes you made.