How to automatically hyphenate words in Microsoft Word to create cleaner margins

While most of the default settings in Microsoft Word are sufficient to create a clean-looking document, occasionally you'll need to change a setting or two to get the right appearance. For instance, there may be times when you find that the default automatic word-wrap setting leaves your margins looking choppy and unclean. There is a way to automatically hyphenate words at the end of a line rather than just let Word move the entire word to the next line. This article tells you how to do that.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Microsoft Word
• A basic understanding of how to create documents in Microsoft Word
• Very basic familiarity of how to navigate through menus in Microsoft Word

1. 
    
   Open the Tools menu

   Having the document open you'll be working with, click on the "Tools" menu then place your mouse over the "Language" option in the drop-down menu followed by "Hyphenation" in the second drop-down menu.

2. 
    
   Check

   After clicking on "Hyphenation" a dialog box will open. From the dialog box, place a check mark next to the option to "Automatically hyphenate the document." This will turn on auto hyphenation for your document. That's all there is to it.

3. 
    
   Print Preview

   Finally, preview your document before printing to hard copy to be sure you've achieved the cleaner margins you were hoping for. From the standard toolbar, click on the "Print Preview" button to see what your document will look like on paper.

Tips & Warnings

• If you decide that you don't want to use auto hyphenation for your document, just follow the steps above. When you get to the dialog box, just uncheck "Automatically hyphenate document." This will return your document to the previous settings.