odd non-breaking hyphen behavior

[Peter T. Daniels]

Linguistics often talks about word endings, and those are written as -
ing, -er, -ed. If you use an ordinary hyphen, Word is quite happy to
leave the hyphen at the end of a line and the following letters at the
start of a new line. If you use a nonbreaking hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-
hyphen), then it properly carries the hyphen to the next line -- but
it _also_ carries the previous word with it, as if there were no
intervening space. (I don't think it used to do that.) I tried typing
two or more spaces but that didn't make the previous word go back to
the earlier line.

Also: If you have the option checked that turns two hyphens into an em-
dash (and hyphen with space on each side to an en-dash), then it also
turns a leading hyphen or non-breaking hyphen (as above) into an en-
dash. (I used to wonder why the mss. I got for editing so often had en-
dashes in front of the endings being discussed, and none of the
authors had done it on purpose.)

And, optional-hyphen (Ctrl-hyphen) will not prevent Word from breaking
a word in the wrong place! (I don't remember the couple of examples I
had recently -- I almost never have this problem because I almost
never have automatic hyphenation turned on.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I agree that none of these behaviors is desirable. I sometimes use the
"minus" operator (U2212) as a non-breaking en dash, and perhaps there is
some other character that could be substituted for the hyphen that would
serve the same purpose. There's a hyphen at 2010 in Arial Unicode MS that
might be better behaved; if so, you could assign a keyboard shortcut to it.
The drawback, of course, is that it would be Arial, which is unlikely to be
your base font, and it might require at least partial font embedding.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Why would an Arial U2010 behave differently from a TNR U2010?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Possibly you have a later version of TNR, but my copy doesn't contain that
glyph. It jumps from 200F to 2013. In fact, if I type 2010 and press Alt+X,
the hyphen is inserted in MS Mincho (gag!).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

Why would an Arial U2010 behave differently from a TNR U2010?

 

[Lisa Wilke-Thissen]

Hi Peter,

Linguistics often talks about word endings, and those are written
as -
ing, -er, -ed. If you use an ordinary hyphen, Word is quite happy to
leave the hyphen at the end of a line and the following letters at
the
start of a new line. If you use a nonbreaking hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-
hyphen), then it properly carries the hyphen to the next line -- but
it _also_ carries the previous word with it, as if there were no
intervening space. (I don't think it used to do that.)

that's a new behaviour in Word 2010. The non-breaking hyphen worked
fine in former versions. I sent a bug report to MS some months ago
(July). So we have to wait...

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Hi Peter,



that's a new behaviour in Word 2010. The non-breaking hyphen worked
fine in former versions. I sent a bug report to MS some months ago
(July). So we have to wait...

Sorry, I have Word2007 in Windows 7. What's your OS?

 

[Lisa Wilke-Thissen]

Hi Peter,

Sorry, I have Word2007 in Windows 7. What's your OS?

using Word 2007 and Windows Vista the non-breaking hyphen works as
expected. The problem occurs in Word 2010 and Windows 7.
But regarding your experience it seems to be a problem in Windows 7
(?). At the moment I have no chance to test Word 2007/Win 7 or Word
2010/Win Vista.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Hi Peter,




using Word 2007 and Windows Vista the non-breaking hyphen works as
expected. The problem occurs in Word 2010 and Windows 7.
But regarding your experience it seems to be a problem in Windows 7
(?). At the moment I have no chance to test Word 2007/Win 7 or Word
2010/Win Vista.

Hmm. If I open on the Vista desktop the document created on the
laptop, I might see a change?

I pdf'd it and printed it, so searching the Nonbreaking character
would tell me where to look ...

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Hmm. If I open on the Vista desktop the document created on the
laptop, I might see a change?

I pdf'd it and printed it, so searching the Nonbreaking character
would tell me where to look ...

I opened the document on the Vista computer and there were no
nonbreaking hyphens at the beginnings of lines.

 

[Lisa Wilke-Thissen]

Hi Peter,

Sorry, I have Word2007 in Windows 7. What's your OS?

Word 2010: I see the odd behaviour with Windows 7, Windows Vista,
Windows XP.
Word 2007: I don't see that behaviour in any of those Windows versions.
In each version of Windows the non-breaking hyphen works fine.

Word 2010: When opening a Word 2007 document (compatibility mode) in
Word 2010, non-breaking hyphen also works fine.

Sorry, but I cannot reproduce the odd behaviour using Word 2007 :-(.