How to turn on automatic hy­phen­a­tion in Word

The Word hy­phen­a­tion feature is a practical way to correctly separate words at the end of lines. You can turn it on and off as you please. When de­ac­tiv­ated, words are not split in two. Instead, a new line is started for words that are too long to fit on the previous line.

How to turn on automatic hy­phen­a­tion in Word quick guide

1. Open your Word document and select Layout from the menu at the top of the screen.
2. Click on Hy­phen­a­tion. A drop-down menu will now appear.
3. Select the desired type of hy­phen­a­tion (None, Automatic or Manual).

How to turn on and customise automatic hy­phen­a­tion in Word

If you decide to use the hy­phen­a­tion feature in a Word document, you have the option of using it for the whole document or for in­di­vidu­al para­graphs. You can even manually define spe­cific­a­tions.

Enabling automatic hy­phen­a­tion in Word

In Word, hy­phen­a­tion is disabled in the default settings. You can activate it by doing the following:

1. Click on Layout in the ribbon at the top of the screen.
2. Select the option Hy­phen­a­tion.
3. Put a tick next to Automatic.

Close

Automatic hy­phen­a­tion is now enabled for the entire document.

De­ac­tiv­at­ing Word hy­phen­a­tion for in­di­vidu­al para­graphs

If you don’t want to use the hy­phen­a­tion feature in certain para­graphs, simply do the following:

1. Select the paragraph(s) where you don’t want hy­phen­a­tion applied.
2. Click on the right mouse button to open the drop-down menu.
3. Click on the menu item Paragraph….
4. Go to the tab Line and Page Breaks.
5. Put a tick in the field Don’t hyphenate and click OK.

Close

Cus­tom­ising Word hy­phen­a­tion

In addition to this approach, there are other ways to customise hy­phen­a­tion in Word:

1. Click on the arrow next to Hy­phen­a­tion in the Layout tab.
2. Select Manual. Here, you can use different types of hy­phen­a­tion.
3. In the Manual Hy­phen­a­tion dialog box, you can set in­di­vidu­al break­points and then confirm them when you’re done.

Close

Inserting protected hyphens using a shortcut

You also have the option to set up protected (non-breaking) hyphens. You can do this by high­light­ing a passage in the text and then pressing the Word key com­bin­a­tion [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [hyphen].

How to enable hy­phen­a­tion in Word for Mac

With a Mac, you can switch on hy­phen­a­tion in the same way you would on Windows. Click on Layout at the top and then select Hy­phen­a­tion. Place a tick next to Automatic Hy­phen­a­tion and click OK.

Turning on and adjusting manual hy­phen­a­tion in Word for Mac

Hy­phen­a­tion in Word can also be set up manually on Apple computers. To do this, you can follow the steps listed above for Windows. Al­tern­at­ively, you can click on Hy­phen­a­tion in the Extras menu and select Manual.

Word will now recognise all the different options for hy­phen­a­tion. You can select the positions you want for hy­phen­a­tion in the Suggested hy­phen­a­tion field.

If you want to manually set up hy­phen­a­tion for a specific area in the document, simply highlight the section of the text before per­form­ing the steps above.

Cus­tom­ising hy­phen­a­tion in Word for Mac

If you are a Mac user and want to separate text and syllables in a Word document using custom settings, do the following:

1. In the Layout menu, select Hy­phen­a­tion Options.
2. Tick the box next to Auto­mat­ic­ally hyphenate document.
3. In the field labelled Hy­phen­a­tion zone, you can define the distance you want between the last part of a word and the right-hand margin.
4. With Limit con­sec­ut­ive hyphens to, you can specify how many con­sec­ut­ive lines can end with hyphens.