Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Turning Off Automatic Hyphenation for Parts of a Document.

Turning Off Automatic Hyphenation for Parts of a Document

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 22, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Malcolm has a long document that contains a novel. The document uses justified text and automatic hyphenation. A few chapters in the novel consist of letters supposedly written by one or other of the characters. Malcolm needs to switch off automatic hyphenation for those few chapters and is wondering how that can be done.

There at a couple of ways you can accomplish this task. For long documents, however, the best solution is to use styles. Define some styles that specify how you want the "letters" from your characters to appear. As part of the definition, make sure that you display the Line and Page Breaks tab of the Paragraph dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Line and Page Breaks tab of the Paragraph dialog box.

Note that there is a check box named Don't Hyphenate. Select this check box, and Word won't hyphenate any paragraph that uses the style. With the style defined, all you need to do is apply it to those paragraphs that make up the letters.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3428) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Turning Off Automatic Hyphenation for Parts of a Document.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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