Yup - it was so frustrating for a while but then after a little F1 searching I found VBA has two very useful functions for string and characters Chr and Asc. I used Asc(selection.text) on a blank cell and lo and behold the returned value was 13. I have a couple of nifty procedures to manipulate strings aren't provided by VBA (or are but not to do what I want) and I'm trying to tie them up into a Kb entry (after I get back from vacation). Another useful tip is looking at the ascii tables provided in VBA. Especially for numbers 0-127 - i use these to search through strings when StrComp etc. just won't do.
And for the end of cell marker space question - try this (I know its not totally effecient but it should work.
[vba]
Dim countChars as integer
Dim temp as string
Dim fRange as Range
ActiveDocument.Tables.Item(x).Cell(I,J).Select 'x = number of table in document
fRange = Selection.Range
temp = ""
For countChars = 1 to fRange.Characters.Count
If countChars = fRange.Characters.Count
temp = temp + " " + Asc(fRange.Characters.Count)
Else
temp = temp + Asc(fRange.Characters.Count)
End if
Next countChars
[/vba]