Controlling Hyphenation


InDesign lets you turn on hyphenation in the Paragraph palette. Once hyphenation is turned on, you can then control how the hyphenation is applied.

To turn on hyphenation:

1.

Select the text.

2.

Check Hyphenate in the Paragraph palette .

Click the Hyphenate checkbox to turn on automatic hyphenation for a paragraph.

Tip

The Hyphenate checkbox is also controlled from within the Hyphenation dialog box (see the next exercise).

To control the hyphenation:

1.

Choose Hyphenate from the Paragraph palette menu. The Hyphenation Settings dialog box appears . The Hyphenate checkbox displays the controls .

The Hyphenation Settings dialog box lets you control how hyphenation is applied.

The Hyphenation controls let you enter values for how words are hyphenated.

2.

Words with at Least controls the minimum number of letters a word must contain before it can be hyphenated.

3.

After First sets the minimum number of letters that must appear before the hyphen.

4.

Before Last sets the minimum number of letters that must appear after the hyphen.

5.

Hyphen Limit sets how many consecutive lines can end with hyphens.

6.

Hyphenation Zone controls the amount of whitespace at the end of a nonjustified line. This option only affects Single-line Composer text.

7.

Hyphenate Capitalized Words allows those words to be hyphenated.

8.

Hyphenate Last Word allows the last word in a paragraph to be hyphenated.

9.

Adjust the hyphenation slider to control the total number of hyphens in the paragraph.

Hyphenation Units are Nigels

The units in the hyphenation slider are called Nigels in honor of Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), the "Spinal Tap" guitarist, whose amplifier went to 11.


Setting Hyphenation Controls

My own preference is to set "Words with at Least" to six or more. This allows a word such as person to be hyphenated. I also prefer a minimum of three letters before the hyphen and three after. This avoids breaking words as un-excited or reluctant-ly.


Hyphenate Capitalized Words?

Some people automatically turn this off so that capitalized words do not hyphenate. I don't. The command doesn't distinguish between proper nouns and words that begin a sentence. So I would rather selectively control how proper nouns break by using the No Break command or by inserting a discretionary hyphen before the word.


Sometimes you may want to prevent words or phrases from being hyphenated or breaking across lines. For instance, you might not want the words Mr. Cohen to be separated at the end of a line. You might not want a compound word such as self-effacing to be broken with another hyphen .

Behold! I am the great and mighty, all-powerful Oz.

Behold! I am the great and mighty, all-powerful Oz.

In the bottom example the word powerful was selected and the No Break command was applied to prevent the text from hyphenating.


To apply the No Break command:

1.

Select the text.

2.

Choose Type > Character to open the Character palette.

3.

Choose No Break from the Character palette menu.

You can also control hyphenation by inserting a discretionary hyphen, which forces the word to hyphenate at that point if it breaks at the end of a line.

To use a discretionary hyphen:

1.

Place the insertion point where you want the hyphen to occur.

2.

Press Command/Ctrl-Shift-(hyphen).

or

Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Win) and choose Insert Special Character > Discretionary Hyphen from the contextual menu.

Tip

The discretionary hyphen prints only when it appears at the end of the line .

A discretionary hyphen appears within the word but prints only when it appears at the end of a line.

Tip

Insert a discretionary hyphen before a word to prevent that instance of the word from being hyphenated.

You can control where a word is hyphenated.

To edit the hyphenation in the dictionary:

1.

Choose Edit > Spelling > Dictionary.

2.

Type the word you want to modify in the Word field as follows :

The tilde characters control the preference for where hyphenation should occur.

  • One tilde (~) indicates the best possible hyphenation position.

  • Two tildes (~~) indicates the next best possible position.

  • Three tildes (~~~) indicates the least acceptable position.

  • A tilde before the word prevents the word from being hyphenated.

3.

Click Add to add the new hyphenation preferences to the dictionary.



InDesign CS2 for Macintosh and Windows(c) Visual QuickStart Guide
InDesign CS4 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide
ISBN: 0321573579
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 309
Authors: Sandee Cohen

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