Tip of the Week: Halting Hyphenation Without Forced Line Breaks
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We’ve all done it: pressed shift+enter/return to stop a word from hyphenating. It’s quick and easy, but it’s sort of like sweeping dirt under the rug. You’ve solved one problem but created another. If you re-use that text either with different formatting, or in a different output a forced line break will almost always crop up in a very inopportune spot. Fortunately, there are plenty of better alternatives to stop a word from hyphenating, like these from Jean-Claude Tremblay:
- Select the word and apply a No Break character attribute.
- Select the word and apply the No Language character attribute.
- Add a Discretionary Hyphen in front of the word (Type > Insert Special Character > Hyphens and Dashes > Discretionary Hyphen).
- Add the word with a tilde (~) in front of it in the user dictionary.
- Use a paragraph GREP style to search the word and apply either method 1 or 2 as a character style.
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I’ve assigned a keyboard shortcut to “No Break” for that very reason.
It’s not just for re-using or reformatting the text, but also if the text is to be translated to another language via IDML, the line break will be retained, and will almost certainly be in the wrong place.
And one disadvantage to assigning “no language” – it prevents the spell checker from seeing the word.
Quote: Select the word and apply a No Break character attribute.
Better yet, always use character and paragraph styles rather than just attributes. Styles are more easily changed. It’s just as quick too.
Quote: Use a paragraph GREP style to search the word and apply either method 1 or 2 as a character style.
Just be careful with GREP styles or quickly done S&R. I used to proof documents for Microsoft. The company had a fetish about tagging trademarks and especially registered trademarks. I had to look for situations where the automated addition of those symbols was inappropriate. For instance, every use of “Apple” doesn’t refer to the tech company.