New Apple chip not displaying Word-for-Mac break characters properly

This has nothing to do with the chip in your computer.

Apple make the Operating System and the hardware. While in development they share it with software makers - like Microsoft - so that the software maker can adjust or adapt their applications to any changes in the Operating System. It is always the task of the software maker to adapt their app to the Operating System. Apple can't start changing other people's code, they don't own it, and doing so would be tantamount to piracy and open them to serious litigation.

So, the flaw here is that the software maker has not adapted to the changes in the OS, and that's why you need to talk to Microsoft support. They own the app, they know it best and if there are changes to be made only they can make them.

It is not the chip on the compute that is causing the problem. It is either a different version of Word on the machines you are using, or the display settings for Word are different on those machines. That is solely a Software issue and has nothing to do with the Hardware on your computer.

With Word open on the computer, you can go to the menu bar and choose the About menu item under the Word menu to view the version number of Word being used on each machine. If the version number is the exact same, then it will be in the Settings for the app that is causing the difference.

If you have the same version of Word installed on both machines – and have therefore ruled out different versions as the cause – there still could be a difference in the way that you have your Word preferences or views set up. Or Word could have some incompatibility with Sonoma that Microsoft hasn't fixed yet.

These are much more likely to be the cause than the difference in machine code instruction sets.

I would suggest contacting Microsoft Support.

The obvious question: did you upgrade to the most recent version of Word when you moved to the new machine?

Other than that, the best place for help with apps made by 3rd parties is from this parties. So I'd be checking the MS Word forum for help too. After all they know their app better than anybody.

The place to ask about problems with Word is

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-msoffice_unknown-mso_OPMac?sort=LastReplyDate&dir=Desc&tab=All&status=all&mod=&modAge=&advFil=&postedAfter=&postedBefore=&threadType=all&isFilterExpanded=true&page=1

As already pointed out, this has nothing to do with being an Apple or Intel chip inside your mac.

Go to Word->Preferences, click on View and:

Then close the preferences window, and you should see the result.

Here is an example (on my M4 Pro Mac, if you wonder):

Don H. wrote:

the text displays as if all the letters were one on top of the other, as if they were typed all in one spot.

Could you post a screenshot of this and provide the exact version of your Word and the font being used? I can't duplicate your problems on my Sonoma with 16.90.2 on an M3 iMac.