Hyphenation for line breaks

Hyphens can be used in typesetting to divide words between the end of a line and the next line, to meet space or formatting constraints:

Line-break hyphenation is often an automatic process done during the design stage. However, you may need to edit the automatic hyphens, or to manually add hyphens in undesigned content. Follow the following rules to add line-break hyphens.

How to use line-break hyphenation

Put the hyphen at the end of the line, not the beginning of the next line:

Make sure each component of the word has at least 3 letters (unless the hyphen occurs after a 2-letter prefix or in a compound word whose first part has only 2 letters – see below):

You can divide the word:

• between syllables

• between prefixes and base words (see Hyphens in prefixes for a list of common prefixes)

• between the 2 halves of a compound word (see Compound words for more examples of such words)

What to avoid

Do not use a line-break hyphen in:

• words with only 1 syllable

• words that are already hyphenated

• proper nouns