You can hyphenate words manually or automatically, or you can use a combination of the two methods. The safest way to hyphenate manually is to insert a discretionary hyphen, which is not visible unless the word needs to be broken at the end of a line. Placing a discretionary hyphen at the beginning of a word prevents it from being broken.

A discretionary hyphen is used to control where a word or phrase breaks. For example, you can specify that the word "nonprinting" breaks as "non-printing" rather than "nonprint-ing." Entering a discretionary hyphen in a word does guarantee that the word can be broken only where the discretionary hyphen appears. Normally, a discretionary hyphen is visible only if it breaks a word.

Insert a discretionary hyphen

1.Click in the word where you want to insert a discretionary hyphen.

2.On the Type menu, point to Insert Special Character, point to Hyphens and Dashes, and then click Discretionary Hyphen, or press CTRL+minus key.

See also

Remove optional hyphens in a word

Remove all optional hyphens

Hyphenate text automatically