How to Insert a Screenshot or Image Properly in Between Two Steps in an Ordered MS Word List

© Ugur Akinci
PROBLEM: You’d like to insert a screenshot or an image in between two consecutive steps in an ordered MS Word list WITHOUT automatically assigning a step number to the image itself.
Here is what typically happens:
Let’s assume you have the following ordered list:

If you hit the ENTER key on your Windows keyboard and insert the horse image, this is what you’ll get:

Oops! The step number before the image does not make sense.
SOLUTION: Here is how you can get rid of the ugly step number before the horse image.
When your cursor is at the end of step 1, press SHIFT and then press ENTER to insert a SOFT RETURN.
If you enter the image after soft return, then your image will not have a step number that does not make sense.

HARD versus SOFT RETURN:

To see the difference between a hard and a soft return in a MS Word document, turn on your PARAGRAPH MARKS (button on the HOME tab of the ribbon with a reverse-P image).

SOFT RETURN is a continuation of the same line. It does not create a new paragraph with the same paragraph style.
HARD RETURN, on the other hand, creates a new paragraph. Since in our example the paragraph in question uses the ORDERED LIST paragraph style, the new line is assigned a new list item number. That’s why our horse image gets a number when we create a hard return by pressing the ENTER key.