Here in word 2016, --- just produces --- and *** produces ***. Not sure what to do with this.

@LeonarddeR, if you press enter after typing --- or ***, it appears that word creates a line break of some sort that is not reported by NVDA. @feerrenrut or @Qchristensen, can you clarify on what is being displayed visually and what the purpose of this would be?

If you type --- (three or more hyphens) then press ENTER, it creates a single line bottom border under the current paragraph.

If you type *** (three or more asterisks) then press ENTER, it creates a 3pt width dotted bottom border (visually a line of solid squares).

It's true that NVDA doesn't announce this, as it doesn't announce any borders, which is the subject of issue #2010

(Note: technically, I would expect that is a different issue to detecting and reporting "shapes", just to clear up any confusion from the initial comment above).

As a work around, press alt+h, b, o to open the borders and shading dialog. The style, colour and width give information about the current border style, and if you tab past those three options, the state of the top, bottom, left and right check boxes indicate which of these borders are in use with the current style.

Reporting of shapes is discussed in #5738 I believe. Closing as duplicate

@ehollig - The name of this issue is confusing. The issue is actually around reading borders, not shapes. I've renamed the issue to clarify and reopened.

Closing as duplicate of #2010 which contains also a test document with different borders and shapes.