We all love that Word wraps our text and breaks text between our pages automatically for us. But when we want to keep our text together for whatever reason, not so much! So let’s take a look at it and see if we can make Word do our bidding!
Nonbreaking Space
Just because a space exists between two words does not necessarily mean that is is alright to have one word at the end of a line and the next at the beginning of the next line. So, yes, there are some times when you will want to keep those two words together on the same line, such as months and days. You would not want to have March at the end of one line and 15, 2011 at the beginning of the next line. It is simply not done and doesn’t parse well. In a legal document you would not want to have the section symbol at the beginning of a line of text either. You always want to keep Mr., Ms., and Mrs., with the name that follows them as well.
When these instances crop up, you want to use a nonbreaking space. Once you know how to do it, it is a piece of cake. You don’t even have to more your hands from the keyboard. Simply use this key combination:
- CTRL + SHIFT + Spacebar.
Nonbeaking Hyphen
For all intents and purposes a nonbreaking hyphen is the same as a nonbreaking space but it works with hyphenated words in your documents. If you do not want MS Word to wrap at a hyphen character, you simply use a nonbreaking hyphen and then, when the hyphenated word reaches the right margin of your document, Word will wrap the entire hyphenated word to the next line if necessary, instead of breaking at the hyphen. To insert a nonbreaking hyphen you use the key combination of:
- CTRL + SHIFT + –
Nonbreaking Lines and Paragraphs
There are instances when you would not want a paragraph or even several lines of text to break between two pages., such as when you have a title in your document, followed by a paragraph of text. You should never have a title at the bottom of one page or your document and the ensuing paragraph at the beginning of the next page.
To keep a paragraph or several lines of text together, follow the steps below:
- On the Home tab, click the Paragraph group’s dialog launcher (small arrow on the bottom right).
- Click the Line and Page Breaks Tab.
- Select Keep Lines together.
- Click OK.
I hope this has cleared up the confusion for those of you who were not certain how this all worked in Word.