How to Enable and Disable Hyphenation in Microsoft Word

Key Takeaways

• In Microsoft Word, you may enable automatic and manual hyphenation.
• You may set hyphenation to None to disable it or select the Don’t Hyphenate formatting exception in your paragraph dialog.

How to Turn on Hyphenation in Microsoft Word

There are two types of hyphenation – automatic and manual. Here’s how to enable either:

Turn on Automatic Hyphenation in Microsoft Word

Automatic hyphenation allows Microsoft Word to place hyphens in your text as you type, saving you time. However, this means that the user cannot control the text that gets hyphenated. Here’s how to turn on automatic hyphenation in Word:

Step 1: Launch Microsoft Word.

Step 2: Open your desired document.

Step 3: On the Microsoft Word ribbon, click the Layout tab.

Step 4: Within the Page Setup group, click on the Hyphenation button.

Step 5: Lastly, select Automatic from the drop-down.

Turn on Manual Hyphenation in Microsoft Word

With manual hyphenation, you can use Microsoft Word to suggest text to hyphenate. The benefit of manual hyphenation is that the choice and control of words to hyphenate are left to the user. Here’s how to turn on manual hyphenation in Word:

Step 1: Launch Microsoft Word.

Step 2: Open the desired document.

Step 3: On the Microsoft Word Ribbon, click the Layout tab.

Step 4: Within the Page Setup group, click the Hyphenation button.

Step 5: Lastly, select Manual from the drop-down.

If you do not want consecutive hyphens in your Word document, limit their occurrence. To do so, limit the number of consecutive hyphens you include in the document by choosing Hyphenation Options rather than Manual or Automatic. Then, proceed with the steps below.

Step 1: In the Hyphenation dialog box, click the text box beside Limit consecutive hyphens to.

Step 2: The text box should have no limit by default. Using the backspace key, clear no limit, enter a figure for the maximum number of hyphens you want, and click OK.

How to Turn off Hyphenation in Microsoft Word

If you do not want hyphens in your Word document, here’s how to turn it off.

Step 1: Launch Microsoft Word.

Step 2: Open the desired document.

Step 3: On the Microsoft Word ribbon, click the Layout tab.

Step 4: Within the Page Setup group, click the Hyphenation button.

Step 5: Lastly, select None from the drop-down.

How to Prevent Text From Being Hyphenated

Rather than turning off hyphenation totally, you may prevent certain text from being hyphenated. Here’s how to prevent it:

Step 1: Launch Microsoft Word.

Step 2: Open a desired document.

Step 3: Select the text that should not have hyphens.

Step 4: Click the dialog box launcher beside Paragraph on the Microsoft Word Ribbon Home tab.

Step 5: Click the Line and Page Breaks tab in the Paragraph dialog box.

Step 6: Under the Formatting exceptions section, check the box for Don’t hyphenate.

Step 7: Lastly, click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.

Pro Tip: Try the following fixes if Microsoft Word doesn’t open.