Searching for Optional Hyphens

Optional hyphens are used within a document to indicate a place where a word can be hyphenated, if necessary. If it is not necessary, then the word is not hyphenated at the point of the optional hyphen. These special characters are manually created by pressing CTRL+- (CTRL and the hyphen key). They are also inserted by using the Hyphenation tool within Word.

At some point you may want to search for optional hyphens within your document. For instance, you may want to delete them or replace them with some other character, such as a real hyphen. To search for optional hyphens, follow these steps:

1. Choose Find from the Edit menu. The Find and Replace dialog box opens in Word 97 and later versions. (Click here to see a related figure.) The Find dialog box opens in Word 6 & Word 95. (Click here to see a related figure.)
2. In the Find What box, enter ^-. Optionally, you can specify the actual character by clicking on the Special button and selecting Optional Hyphen from the list of special characters. (If you are using Word 97 or a later version, you may need to click on the More button before you can see the Special button.)
3. Set other searching parameters, as desired.
4. Click on Find Next.