Adding Many No-Width Optional Breaks

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 23, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2000, 2002, and 2003

Beginning in Word 2000, Microsoft introduced a new character called the no-width optional break. This character has been discussed in other issues of WordTips; for English documents it can be used to wrap long or compound words at non-standard places. For instance, it could be used to add an optional break after a slash character.

If you want to use the no-width optional break in a document that has lots of slashes, you may wonder if there is a way to do a find and replace to add the special character. The short answer is "yes, there is." Follow these steps:

Press Ctrl+H. Word displays the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.

In the Find What box, enter the slash.
In the Replace With box, enter a slash and then hold down the Alt key as you type 8203 on the numeric keypad. You'll see a little box appear after the slash.
Click Replace All.
Close the Find and Replace dialog box.

Holding down the Alt key as you type 8203 on the numeric keypad inserts the Unicode character for the no-width optional break. After performing all the steps, your document is set to do an optional break after any slash character.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3903) applies to Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, and 2003.

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. Learn more about Allen...

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What is six minus 4?

2022-04-23 14:51:48

Phil Rabichow

Strange. I've tried this in Word 2003 & using Alt+8203 on the numeric keyboard & all it does is insert a rectangle within a rectangle.

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