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Publisher automatically hyphenates text as it is typed or pasted into text boxes. You can control where and how the hyphens appear in your text by using the Hyphenate dialog box.

Change where hyphens occur in a word

If the Automatically hyphenate this story check box selected, the story will be automatically hyphenated based on grammatical rules and the distance of the hyphenation zone —the amount of space to leave between the end of the last word in a line and the right margin.

Note: To reduce the number of hyphens, make the hyphenation zone wider. To reduce the raggedness of the right margin, make the hyphenation zone narrower. If you have words that are long, you may want to control where the hyphens occur in the word.

Manually insert a hyphen

  1. Select the word that contains the hyphen that you want to change.

    Note: If you do not select a word, the tool checks the entire story.

  2. On the Text Box Tools tab, click Hyphenation.

  3. You will need to complete the following two steps only if you’ve selected the entire story. If you’ve selected a single word skip to step #4:

    1. Clear the Automatically hyphenate this story check box.

    2. Click Manual.

  4. In the Hyphenate at box, click where you want to place the hyphen — it needn't be at one of the recommended places — and then click Yes.

Delete a manually inserted hyphen

You can remove a manually inserted hyphen by selecting the hyphen, and then pressing DELETE.

Tip:  If you do not want a word to be automatically hyphenated you can either turn off automatic hyphenation or insert a carriage return before the word to force it onto a new line.

Change the number of hyphens that Publisher adds

You may want to change the frequency of hyphens in your publication for layout or aesthetic reasons.

  1. Click inside a text box, then select the Text Box Tools tab, and then click Hyphenation.

  2. In the Hyphenation zone box, enter the value that you want.

For

Make the zone

A more even right edge

Smaller

Fewer white gaps in text

Smaller

Fewer hyphens

Larger

Fewer short syllables before or after the hyphen

Larger

Add hyphens by using the keyboard for words that can and cannot be separated

You might want finer control over hyphenation in some instances, such as in hyphenated names or technical terms. For this fine control, place the insertion point where you want to insert a hyphen, and then do one of the following:

  • For a word that is always hyphenated and can be separated onto two lines, such as "two-thirds," press HYPHEN (-).

  • For a word or number that is always hyphenated and can't be separated on two lines, such as "555-0123," press CTRL+SHIFT+HYPHEN (-).

  • For a word that can be hyphenated, but only when it is necessary to split the word onto two lines, press CTRL+HYPHEN (-).

Hyphenate text automatically

Fix text hyphenation

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