A friend got in touch recently in a bit of a panic. All sorts of odd marks had appeared in her Word document. It looked something like this:

What were all these funny symbols? Where had they come from and, more importantly, how could she get rid of them?

Showing paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols

Word gives you the option to view paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols. Basically, this means that you can see where the author of a document has pressed the Return key or Tab or Space, or inserted a forced break or some other formatting. Why is it useful? It means that if you are editing or otherwise tidying up a document, you can see what’s been done in order to resolve it. For example, in this document, I can see that the author has used the Return key to force text to appear on a new page (instead of using Ctrl-Enter to force a page break):

and when I’ve done it properly, I can see the page break marked:

So, how did I get to see these funny marks? In Word for both Mac and PC, you can find a button with the paragraph mark on it which will make them display:

Show Paragraph marks in Word for PC

Go to the Home tab and you’ll find it half way along. Press the button, it will go orange, and your formatting marks will display.

I’ve actually put this button onto my Quick Access Toolbar (find out how to do that) as it’s a very useful button for an editor/proofreader!

Show Paragraph marks in Word for Mac

In Word for Mac, the Show Paragraph marks button is handily already in the top toolbar. Press the button and all your formatting will become visible.

How do I hide the Paragraph marks and other formatting?

If the marks appear and you want to hide them, simply find the Paragraph Marks button and press it again. It should stop being orange, and your formatting marks will no longer be displayed.

Thanks to Linda for the inspiration and Mac screenshot!

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This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

In a previous article, we talked about protecting your Word document using a Watermark (watermarks can also be used to extend your corporate or other branding through your documentation). Today we’re going to look at other, stronger ways to protect your Word 2010 document and prevent people from making changes to it.

Why might I want to protect my Word 2010 document?

Protecting a Word 2010 document means that anyone apart from you can either only access the document by using a password or is unable to make certain, or any, editorial changes to the original document.

Why would I want to stop people opening a document?

• If you are storing confidential documents on a shared drive in a company-wide network
• If you want to send a document to someone who shares an email address with a number of other people (for example a general email address at your accountant’s office)
• If you want to send a document to someone but need to ensure that anyone intercepting it cannot open the document

Why would I want to stop people editing a document?

• You’ve completed a final version of a document and want to make sure no one does any more edits
• You are sending something like an invoice or a contract and want to make sure the recipient does not change anything
• You’ve created a procedural document to be saved on a shared drive and don’t want your colleagues to make unauthorised changes

Where is the menu for protecting documents in Word 2010?

To access the menu for protecting documents, select the File tab at the extreme left of the row of tabs (remembering that it’s Home that is automatically selected), then visit the Info area, where you will find a section titled Protect Document:

Click on the Protect Document button and you’ll be presented with a list of options:

We’ll go through these in turn. Some of them are not applicable if you’re working on your own, with only one computer on your network, but we’ll take a quick peek at them anyway.

What are my options for protecting my document?

Taking the options in turn …

Mark as Final

The Mark as Final option creates a read-only version of the document which will be marked as final and which will not let anyone make any changes. Access it via the menu we discussed above:

Click on the button and you’re given a dialogue box to click on:

Note: it’s a good idea to save this under a new file name.

You will then need to go and set the document to being Read-Only, which you can see how to do below in the Restrict Editing section.

Note 2: No one else can edit the read-only document, however they could possibly “save as” and then edit it (only turning a document into a PDF protects it from all changes).

Encrypt with Password

The second option allows you to apply a password to the document. This will mean that no one can open it without having the password, whether on your standalone computer, a shared network drive, or a copy of the document that you have emailed to them:

When you click this button, you will be asked to enter a password:

You will then be asked to enter the password again (the dialogue box looks the same).

When you or anyone else tries to open the document, this box will appear:

If you want anyone else to be able to access the document you will need to let them know the password. If you’re sending the document as an attachment to an email, common sense tells you not to send the password in the body of the email …

Note: Once the user has accessed the document using the password, they will be able to edit and save it freely unless you have also applied one of the other levels of protection.

Restrict Editing

The next option, Restrict Editing, allows you to choose what parts or aspects of the document can be edited:

Click on this option and you are able to choose what levels of the document anyone else can edit. It will return you to your original document and give you a sidebar on the right hand side of your document:

Lots of options here, but looking at them in turn, you can …

Limit which styles can be edited – you will be given a list of options. This is useful if you have carefully set lots of headings styles and don’t want them to be changed:

Or allow only certain types of editing to be done:

This is where you can make the document Read-Only, i.e. it cannot now be edited.

Once you’ve made your selections here, you will need to press the Start enforcement button to initiate this. I believe that you cannot then make restricted edits yourself, although clearly you can go in and change these settings on your own document.

I suspect that almost no one knows about these settings, by the way, so if you are setting such restrictions, it might be polite and save time in the long run to let the recipient know that you’re doing this.

Restrict editors

This is a Windows-specific option that can allow you to set permissions for various people, usually within an organisation.

This involves using Microsoft’s Information Rights Management Service and being signed up to Windows Live. The message you get if you try to click Restricted Access or Manage Credentials explains it in more detail:

As the message says, many organisations (and all of the ones that I’ve worked in) have their own rights management systems embedded in their procedures and file/drive setups. It’s fine to set permissions and protect your document in that way, but that’s outside the scope of this article: you will need to talk to your IT support people or a knowledgeable administrator in your department. But this is there, and can be done if you have the relevant signups (again, contact IT or your systems administrator before signing yourself and others up for something that can affect access to documents on a shared organisational system).

Adding a digital signature

This last option is another one where you have to sign up for something extra …

This is another useful way to protect your document, however, you will need to purchase a signature service from the Office Marketplace or you can sign up for a third-party service which will apply a digital signature to your document.

I have signed up to a third-party system which applies a digital version of my signature which I have previously uploaded onto documents, which some of my clients insist on me doing when signing contracts, etc. I am not entirely sure how this would hold up legally in a court of law if you were trying to protect your document, however.

Creating a PDF using Word 2010

The best way to protect your document from being changed is still to convert it into a PDF. A PDF is a copy of a document, a bit like a photocopy, which cannot be edited and changed. Well, that’s not strictly true nowadays: the VERY best way to protect a document is to turn it into a PDF and password protect it so it can only be opened by the recipient and make it read-only so it can’t be edited. I’m going to publish an article on PDFs soon, so look out for that.

You used to have to use a separate programme to create a PDF from a Word document; however, from Word 2010 onwards, you can create a PDF directly within Word.

In the Save and Send menu under the File tab, choose Create PDF/XPS Document:

What is an XPS document? Open XML Paper Specification (also called OpenXPS) is an open specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format, developed by Microsoft. It’s kind of an equivalent standard to PDF. If you’re asked to send someone a document in this format, now you know what it is (I’ll admit here that I have never done this myself).

Hit the Create PDF/XPS button and you’ll be taken to the Save As screen to save your document as a PDF (note that it might well take you to a temporary file folder and you’ll need to navigate to whichever folder you’ve saved your original document in).

You can also use the Save As menu directly from the Home tab for this function:

I’ll go into more detail about how you can protect that PDF further in my article on PDFs.

For now, we’ve learned how to protect a document in Word 2010, including information on why you’d want to do that, where you can find the menus, and what you can do.

Related articles

How to Watermark your document

How to protect your document in Word 2007

(coming soon):

Protecting your document using PDFs

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This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

Sometimes you want to set a watermark on a Word document. This article explains what a watermark is, why you might want to add one to your document, how to add a watermark, how to customise a watermark, and how to remove them.

What is a watermark?

A watermark is a word, phrase or picture that appears “behind” the text in a document. It gets its name from the physical marks that are created during the paper-making process. The pulp is floated in water, and a frame is brought up under it to collect the pulp into a square. The frame is lined with thin wires (and symbols or text can be included, too) and when the pulp is collected in the frame, it will be thinner where there’s a wire or other protruding part of the frame. When the pulp has dried into a sheet of paper, the thinner parts of the paper will let through more light when held up to a light source, and so you can see the symbols and words, as well as the lines of the original frame (this is how papermakers marked their stock and also how you can tell how a book was put together. For more information on the fascinating world of watermarks, you can start off with this Wikipedia article.

Why would I want to watermark my Word document?

If you watermark a document, whoever opens that document will see the watermark sitting behind that document. This is basically to stop it being used either in their everyday work or for other commercial purposes. It’s very much like the way that photos from mass sports events or wedding photographer sites often have words printed faintly across them. It stops you printing them out and using them without buying them.

Some reasons to do this:

• You’ve prepared a document for someone and you’re charging them after you’ve completed the job. Sending them a watermarked document will proved that you’ve fulfilled your side of the bargain but prevent them from actually using the document. Once they’ve paid you, you can send them a non-watermarked version.
• You’ve prepared a document to send out to people but you don’t want them to share it further or claim authorship, or you want to remind them it’s a sample. I’ve done this with the sample chapter of my book that I send out to people who sign up to receive my newsletter. It has “Sample” written across the page behind the text, so that people can’t use it in another way and to remind them that it’s just a sample and they can buy the whole thing.
• You’re sending out a late reminder of an invoice and if you were doing it on paper, you’d use one of those URGENT stamps and red ink.
• You’re creating a corporate document and want to include corporate branding of some sort behind the text.

Note that if you’re watermarking to protect your work, the watermarking should go alongside copyright statements if you want to use it for that purpose, and I’m not an expert on, or advising you on, copyright here – just telling you how to apply a watermark.

How do I add a watermark to a Word document?

To access the Watermark menu, go to the Page Layout tab, then look in the Page Background area, where you will find the Watermark button:

The Watermark button has a small downward-pointing arrow which implies that you can access a menu. Click on the arrow and there’s the menu:

If you select any of the standard examples that they give you (and note the scroll bar on the right, which you can use to see more default watermarks, that watermark will go straight onto your document. But you might want to customise the watermark in terms of wording, colour, text size and font, etc. and you can do that by selecting Custom Watermark at the bottom of this menu.

How do I customise my Word watermark?

Of course you will find lots of options for customising. Select Custom Watermark at the bottom of the Watermark menu to access the Custom Watermark menu:

You can see here that the menu defaults to No watermark, because that’s what we started with. But there are options for adding a Picture watermark or Text watermark, and you select which you want to work with by clicking on the radio buttons in the left-hand margin. We’re going to work with a text watermark in this example, so we click on the radio button next to Text watermark:

Now the fields to do with text watermarks become active (are no longer greyed-out) and we can change the language, the actual text, the font, size, colour and orientation.

Here I’m changing the text – it defaults to the first standard text but you can just type in what you want to appear there. I’m also changing the colour – but note that I’ve left Semitransparent ticked. If you don’t do that (see below), the watermark will be much heavier and will actually obscure part of the text … which can be useful, of course!

Once you’ve made your choices and changed the text, colour, etc., press the Apply button to apply the changes.

And here’s my custom watermark – my text, in the colour I chose.

Advanced watermark customisation

We won’t go into all the detail about customising here, as the menus are pretty self-explanatory. You can use the Picture watermark option to, for example, add your company logo to a tender document, or another image to make your documents look more attractive (beware of making them too “busy” or, worse, undermining their readability: remember that you need to consider people with low vision who might be reading the printed or on-screen document, and if you suspect the document might be photocopied in the future, steer clear of a lot of watermarking, as it’s apt to become darker and more visible when it’s copied).

A quick look at transparency: if you untick the Semitransparent box in the Custom Watermark menu above, your watermark will be a lot heavier and may obscure some of the text. Here I’ve changed the colour to black and unticked Semitransparent.

How do I edit my watermark?

In the case I’ve just shown you, I simply went back into the Watermark menu then the Custom Watermark menu; my choices were there already and I changed them. The choices you have made will stay in the menu until you change them or remove the watermark entirely, so you can pop in and adjust it as you like.

How do I remove watermarks?

If you want to remove the watermarks on a document, go to the Watermark menu and select Remove Watermark:

Of course, this means that other people could remove your watermark, too. So if you watermark a document to protect it, and you don’t want someone to remove that watermark, you will need to protect the document itself by making it uneditable, either by security protecting it or changing it into a pdf document (the latter is what I have done with my sample chapter). That’s an article for another time …

How do I apply a watermark in Word 2013?

If you’re using Word 2013, you will need to note that they’ve added an extra Design tab, and you’ll find the Watermark feature there.

How do I create a default watermark for all of my documents?

There’s no way to save a default watermark or add one permanently to your watermark gallery. If all of your documents are going to have the same watermark, it’s best to create a blank document with the watermark applied, then save it as a Word template (Save – Save as – drop down Type – Word template). Then, use that template when you’re starting a new document in Word. Thanks to my commenters for suggesting this addition to the article!

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This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

If you found this interesting, you might also be interested in:

How to protect your document in Word 2007

How to protect your document in Word 2010

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

How do you change the colour of the text in your Word document?

Why would I want to change the colour of the text in my document?

You might want a section of the text to stand out, to match your company branding or to look attractive on a menu or other display document. It’s easy to change the text colour to do this.

Note: don’t use changed text colour to alert your proofreader/editor to something you want to do – read this article to find out why.

How to change the text colour using the menu bar

You can find the text colour button in the Home tab, in the font section of the menu bar:

Make sure the text that you want to appear in a different colour has been highlighted. Locate the letter A with a red underline and click on the down arrow to the right of the letter to access the Colour menu:

To see how to use this palette, hop down past the next section and join me at “How to select your colour”.

How to change the text colour using right click

You can do a lot to a chunk of text by highlighting it and right-clicking. Try that on some text now by highlighting it then right-clicking over the highlighted text:

You will now find not one but two ways to change the text colour – a button with an A underlined in red (circled) and a Font menu (arrow). If you click on the button, you’ll get to the same point as in the section above. Click on Font for now ..

In the Font menu, you’ll find all sorts of things you can do to your font – very useful if you want to apply particular effects to the highlighted section of text. For now, we’re going to use the drop down arrow under Font color to select our font colour:

We’ve now got a choice of basic colours, with common ones at the bottom. Click, for example, on the first green, and your highlighted text will turn green, although you’ll need to press the OK button to make that change stick:

How do I choose a custom colour for my text?

You can, of course, go even more customised than this. In both ways to access the menu, you’ll find the words More colors… at the bottom of the palette:

Clicking on this option will give you the Customise colours dialogue box, with two sets of increasingly customisable colour palettes to choose from. First of all, we have Standard colours:

You can see that we’re on the Standard tab here: there are plenty of colours and shades of grey to choose from, and you click on the colour and press OK to accept it. Or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, you can select the Custom tab …

… and have a huge range of colours to choose from. Here, you can click on the colour and then move the arrow up and down to adjust the amount of black in the colour, and it handily shows you the original and new colours at the bottom of the dialogue box.

Now you know how to change the text colour in Word to an almost infinite number of colour choices. You can use the same button or right-click and font option in Excel and PowerPoint, too.

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This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

Today we’re going to learn about the different kinds of justification that you can use in Word documents, and why we would choose to use the particular options.

What is justification?

Justification is the way in which your text is set out on the page. A margin is justified if all of the words on that margin are aligned vertically. For example, this article uses left justification: all of the lines of text start in the same place on the left, unless I manually indent them using tab or bullet points, and all of the ends of the lines present a ragged appearance on the right.

How do I set the justification in my Word document?

You will find the justification menu under the Home Tab, in the Paragraph Section – four little buttons with indications of what the text will look like:

You can see four little buttons, in order from left to right: left justification, centre justification, right justification, full justification.

To set the justification for text that you have already typed, highlight the text and press the appropriate button. To start typing in a particular layout, press the button, check that it’s gone orange, and then start typing.

Left justification

Left justification means that all of the lines of text are lined up on the left hand side, but are ragged on the right:

Full justification

Full justification is very common and does look neat, although it can have some issues, as we find when we try to type text in a column or table using this form of justification:

Right justification

Right justification can look a bit odd in a text (and can be confused with the right-to-left text direction, which would of course use this as standard rather than left justification). However, it is extremely useful if you want to line up a list of numbers or prices so they look lovely and neat. This works in tables and columns of course, too, and makes it so easy to make things look tidy.

Centre justification

Centre justification is hardly ever used in anything but a heading, a poem, maybe, or something with a special design like a menu. But if you want to do it, here it is. One thing you need to watch out for is that if you hit the enter key to make a new line in order to get the effect or layout that you want, Word will helpfully capitalise the first word on the next line for you (see circled text below). However, at least in Word 2007 and Word 2010, if you change this to lower case once, it will leave it on lower case the next time! Clever Word!

We’ve learned in this article about what justification is, the different kinds of justification, their advantages and disadvantages, and when you might want to use them.  I hope you’ve learned something useful here!

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

This article explains the correct – and incorrect – way to add line numbers to a Word document. Why would you want to do that? Read on and find out! This works for Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013.

Why do I need to add line numbers to a Word document?

I was inspired to write this post after my colleague Katharine O’Moore Klopf mentioned that she’d been asked to do this by the editors of a journal for which she was editing an article. Presumably they wanted to be able to refer to particular line numbers in their criticism of the piece.

Transcriptions will sometimes have line numbers, if they’re going to be discussed in detail, and we can probably all recall from our dim and distant pasts working on critiques of poems and plays which had 5, 10, 15 etc. in the margins.

So these are all reasons for adding line numbers to a Word document.

How NOT to add line numbers to a Word document

If you find the need to add line numbers, it’s kind of natural that you might think – oh, I’ll just make the whole document into a numbered list. Well, to do this you would have to put a return at the end of each line to make it into a new line. Then you would highlight the whole text and add numbered bullets. But, oh, look what happens:

The numbers push the lines across and they run over onto the next line; all possibility of right justification is lost; and heaven help you if you want to insert or delete any text once you’ve done it!

So, don’t do that.

How to add line numbers to a Word document – the correct way (Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013)

Line numbering and its options can be found in Word 2007 and Word 2010 in the Page Layout tab, in the Page Setup area. There you will find Line Numbers:

Click on the arrow next to Line Numbers to bring up its Options menu:

It will automatically be set to None – choose Continuous and see what happens to your paragraphs …

Line numbers have automatically appeared, but the formatting of the text, its justification etc., remain as they were. This menu also allows to you to choose whether to restart the numbering at the beginning of each page, or each section, or to suppress the numbering for the particular paragraph your cursor is in.

Line numbering options in Word

You also have a number (sorry!) of options to choose from in order to customise your line numbering. You reach these options from the last item on the Line Numbering menu …

… although when you click on this option, you are taken into a general dialogue box for Page Layout:

and you need to click on Line Numbers… at the bottom, which will finally give you a list of options:

To go through the options in order …

• Add line numbers – this gives you the chance to add or remove them at this stage
• From text – the distance between the text and the number. Click on the arrows to choose the distance (I usually just use Auto)
• Count by – this allows you to display only every x number. I don’t think “Count by” is a particularly useful way to describe this, but scroll down to see it in action
• Numbering Restart each page / Restart each section / Continuous – this repeats the options you found on the first screen, but it’s useful to have them here if you’re generally messing around in the Page Layout menu and don’t want to go out of it to set your line numbering

Whatever you choose on here, click OK twice to get out of this dialogue box and the Page Layout one.

How do I produce a line number every five or ten lines?

You may remember from literature lessons at school that poetry and plays often have every 5th line marked. You can do this in Word by choosing that Count by option in the Line Numbering Options menu (see above for how to get to it).

Set the number to 5 …

… and as if by magic, when you return to your document after choosing OK – OK, you will find every fifth line numbered:

Working in Word 2003

In Word 2003 you will need to follow these menus: File – Page Setup:

Choose the Layout tab in the dialogue box and the Line Numbers button. Choose to Apply to the Whole document or This point forward. Click on Line Numbers:

Tick Add line numbering and choose to Restart each page/section and Continuous. Click OK twice to accept – in this dialogue box you also find the options Start at, From text and Count by that are explained above.

Thanks to Katharine O’Moore Klopf for the Word 2003 screen shots and instructions.

Copying and pasting a document with line numbers

It’s come to my attention (thanks to a commenter on this post) that it’s not possible to copy and paste text with line numbers into a new blank document.

This is because the line numbers function actually displays a feature of your document (much like if you turn on paragraph marks) but the line numbers are not a part of the document itself.

If you want to transfer your line numbers into another document, you can do this in one of two ways:

1. Save As the document to make an exact copy (with a different file name) and then add your other text around it
2. Copy and paste your text into a new document and add the line numbers again

At least we know now …

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This article has explained why you might want to add line numbers to your document, and how to do it. If you found this useful, please post a comment, share and like this article! Thank you!

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013 all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

This article explains how to add and remove hyphenation in a Word document, and how to work with the options you have in the hyphenation menu.

Why would I want to add hyphens to a document?

This issue doesn’t normally come up with standard documents where the text is in a smallish size and extends across the entire width of the page. In fact I hardly ever see it in the work I do, and was only reminded of it when a client had accidentally set automated hyphenation in part of his document that happened to contain long words. Where did all these hyphens come from, I wondered.

It is useful, however, if you are working with columns, say in a table, or for a newsletter you’re publishing, or some other part of a document where you want to have a narrow band of text running down the page. If you just put your text in your column and don’t justify it on the right hand side, you will end up with a very ragged look:

In fact, as you can see (marked by the arrow), one word is just too long for the line and splits at the last letter, something which doesn’t obey any of the standard rules of hyphenation (I bet this has happened in your tables – it has in my clients’).

Maybe we can neaten it up by applying Right Justification …

Oh no! In its effort to make everything tidy, Word has carefully inserted huge spaces between words (unlike someone typesetting properly on a computer or by hand, it doesn’t space out the letters in the words so much as just add massive spaces). And poor old Mr Long Word is still dangling a letter onto the next line.

This looks pretty horrible, doesn’t it. Adding automatic or manual hyphenation is the way forward.

How do I add automatic hyphenation to my Word document?

To work with the hyphenation options, we need to be in the Page Layout tab, and the Page Setup area, and there you’ll find Hyphenation (with a little pop-up box explaining it). This is the case in Word 2007 and Word 2010. In Word 2003, you need to select the following menus: Tools > Language > Hyphenation.

If you click on the arrow to the left of the word Hyphenation, you get a menu that looks like this:

You can choose here between None, Automatic and Manual, and then have some options, too. We’ll look at those options in a moment.

What happens if I add automatic hyphenation to my document?

If you highlight the text and then select Automatic from the Hyphenation menu, Word will automatically insert hyphens into the text to break the words in sensible, permitted places (there is a whole art to this which I will discuss another time. I’m not sure which exact rules Word follows, but a quick look shows that it’s pretty good). So if your text is right justified, you’ll get this:

You can see here that Word has hyphenated all of the longer words that previously caused those big gaps, and made the text an awful lot tidier.

You can do this on unjustified text, too:

but I personally think that this still looks a bit messy.

How do I remove automatic hyphenation?

To remove automatic hyphenation when you find it in a document and don’t want it, highlight the offending text and choose None from the Hyphenation menu in Page Layout > Page Setup:

All of the automatic hyphenation should disappear.

How do I use manual hyphenation in my document?

If you choose the manual hyphenation option, based on where your cursor is placed at the time you select this option, Word will give you a choice of where and whether to hyphenate your words:

(here we can see our unhyphenated text, with the cursor on “demonstrate”). Once you’ve clicked on Yes or No, it will hop along to the next word that’s a candidate for hyphenation.

Why shouldn’t I just hyphenate totally manually?

Of course, you can just look for gaps and manually type a hyphen in the middle of the word, and it will split over two lines. However, this is a concrete character that you’ve inserted into the word, and so if you change the wording in your text so that the offend-ing word no longer comes at the end of the line, you’ll retain the hyphen charac-ter and get artefacts like the ones you can see in this para-graph. Much better to automate the manual process, so to speak …

What are the hyphenation options?

If you click on the Hyphenation Options at the bottom of the Hyphenation dialogue box, you are given a few choices:

Working from the top …

• Automatically hyphenate document – does what it says on the tin
• Hyphenate words in CAPS – you may not want to split long acronyms, etc. – if not, then untick this box
• Hyphenation zone – this is the maximum space allowed between a word and the right hand margin. Increase this number and the hyphenation zone becomes wider – and you will have fewer hyphens. A lower number will give you more hyphens
• Limit consecutive hyphens to – allows you to prevent Word from hyphenating at the end of every line – best adjusted once you’ve set hyphenation and seen what it looks like
• Manual… – gives you another way to get to the Manual Hyphenation feature

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In this article we’ve learned why we might want to apply automatic hyphenation to a document, how we do it, how to remove automatic hyphenation, and the options that are available in the hyphenation menu.

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents. Do like and share as much as you can, and/or leave me a comment if this article has been useful to you.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …