When to Hyphenate Your Document

Summary: Depending on the formatting "look" you may want to achieve in your document, you may find it helpful to use the hyphenation tool in Word. You can hyphenate as many times as desired, but you will get better results (and expend less energy) if you remember the guidance in this tip on the best times to hyphenate. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

Word includes a hyphenation tool that you can use to make better use of the horizontal text space on your page. You should not need to hyphenate your document often, if you remember these guidelines of when hyphenation is necessary:

Hyphenate only before you print. This should be the last step you do, definitely after spell checking and grammar checking your document (if you do these as separate steps).
Hyphenate after you change printer drivers. Printer drivers affect the horizontal spacing of fonts. Since the horizontal spacing changes, the applicable hyphenation will change, as well.
Hyphenate if you change fonts. It is the font that determines how much text you can get on a line. When you change fonts, you change the amount of text that will fit on a line, and thus change the need for hyphenation.
Hyphenate if you change machines. If you choose to print your document on a different machine than it was developed on, you will undoubtedly be using a different printer driver and perhaps a different version of Word--both of which can affect horizontal spacing of your text.

Tip #1099 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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When to Hyphenate Your Document