Optional hyphen

[mirajude]

I have a specific hyphenation issue in Word 2003 and haven't been able to
find the answer in the other threads here. Hopefully someone will be able to
help me!

I have auto-hyphenation on. I need to have a word hyphenate at a specific
point. My client doesn't like words to hyphenate after the first syllable if
that syllable is only 2 letters, for example they don't like "in-vestment"
but are OK with "invest-ment." I tried using an optional hyphen after "vest"
but if the word had already hyphenated after the first syllable, the optional
hyphen had no affect.

An optional hyphen before the word, as well as one where I want the word to
break, worked but I ran into a bug with this. If the first optional hyphen
happened to end up being the last character on a line, it printed. Bad!

I also tried using Tools>Language>Set Language>Do not check spelling or
grammar along with an optional hyphen at the point I wanted the break, but
that didn't do it either.

I should also say that I tried these fixes with a variety of fonts, and with
both left-aligned and justified text, so I don't think my problem is related
to one of those things.

Right now, my best option is to suppress hyphenation of that word
altogether, but it's not an ideal solution. Are there any other options?

Thanks!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You have already tried what I would have suggested:

I also tried using Tools>Language>Set Language>Do not check spelling or
grammar along with an optional hyphen at the point I wanted the break, but
that didn't do it either.

I do all hyphenation manually myself, so I'm not familiar with the way auto
hyphenation works, but I would have thought that formatting the Word as "Do
not check spelling or grammar" would suppress the auto hyphenation (as it
evidently does). I would not have expected that it would also suppress
manual hyphenation, but I guess that is not surprising, as there's no way
Word can really distinguish between optional hyphens it inserts and ones you
insert. The only workaround I can think of is to insert an actual hyphen;
this is risky, of course, if the document is reformatted, not to mention
that the word will be marked as misspelled.

 

[mirajude]

Thanks for responding - at least I know I didn't miss anything!

I was able to fix almost all of the problems by adjusting the hyphenation
zone for the file. Then I got rid of the last few by suppressing hyphenation

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Of course, adjusting the hyphenation zone is exactly what is required; if I
were more familiar with the feature, I would have suggested that.