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kyle_bodge
Participant
October 6, 2017
Answered

"No break" making my text invisible?

  • October 6, 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 20547 views

I have a sentence in a text box with a hyphen breaking up a word. I've tried multiple different ways of using "no break" (just highlighting the word, highlighting the whole sentence, selecting the text box itself) and no matter what I do, turning on no break makes the text in the box invisible. The text is still there, it's not deleting it; as soon as I turn no break off, it's visible again. Is there something I'm doing wrong, or a fix for what I'm experiencing?

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Correct answer Barb Binder

Following up on Willi's answer... if you are trying to keep one occurrence of a word from breaking, add a discretionary hyphen at the beginning of the word by pressing Ctrl+Shift+- (Windows) or Command+Shift+- (Mac OS). (Alternatively, the discretionary hyphen can be used in the middle of a word to guarantee that the word can be broken only where the discretionary hyphen appears.)

All this and more explained here:

Compose and hyphenate text in Adobe InDesign

6 replies

Lukas Engqvist
Community Expert
Lukas EngqvistCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 14, 2018

The "No break" is keeping those words together, as it should. Now the reason your text is disappearing must have to do with some other setting. Is there any paragraph setting keeping lines together or the next paragraph that is keeping with previous. Learning to work with rules take time and InDesign is following the rules you have given, just you may not know what your rules are.

Using the story editor (Command why?, "cmd-Y" or "ctrl-Y" on PC) will let you know what text is after and what styling is applied.


Also the simplest way to avoid hyphenating a single word is to add a discretionary hypen at the start of the word. (cmd-shift-hypen)

I would be happy to look at it, but it is tricky to trouble shoot as I would need to know all the paragraph settings for the paragraph you are in and the settings for the next paragraph along with any character styles and overrides to trouble shoot.

A
ardiller
Participant
November 14, 2018

Use feature Hyphenate in tab Paragraph. Not No-break in Character.

    L
    Community Expert
    LaubenderCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 6, 2018

    Hi,

    to see all the text in the Story Editor Window, also the overset one, select some text or the text frame and do Cmd + y ( Mac OS ) or Ctrl + y (Windows). When in Story Editor select the text that is in overset and check formatting. From my German InDesign where "No Break" ( "Kein Umbruch" ) is applied to the whole text in the frame:

    Regards,
    Uwe

      Barb Binder
      Community Expert
      Barb BinderCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
      Community Expert
      October 6, 2017

      Following up on Willi's answer... if you are trying to keep one occurrence of a word from breaking, add a discretionary hyphen at the beginning of the word by pressing Ctrl+Shift+- (Windows) or Command+Shift+- (Mac OS). (Alternatively, the discretionary hyphen can be used in the middle of a word to guarantee that the word can be broken only where the discretionary hyphen appears.)

      All this and more explained here:

      Compose and hyphenate text in Adobe InDesign

      ~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
      Willi Adelberger
      Community Expert
      Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      October 6, 2017

      No break forces all text with that attribute to be in the same line. If there is not enough room, it is forced out to overset text.

      If you don't want to hyphen a specific word, insert it into the user dictionary and write a tilde ~before that word or if you want to ommit hyphenation in ine single case, write a a dicretionay hyphen before that word.

        K
        kyle_bodgeAuthor
        Participant
        October 6, 2017

        Okay, that explains my problem - I thought no break was the setting that stopped InDesign from putting hyphens into overflow words and instead automatically bumped those words to the next line in the text box and tidied the spacing (does that make sense?) What setting is that?

        rob day
        Community Expert
        rob dayCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 6, 2017

        Okay, that explains my problem - I thought no break was the setting that stopped InDesign from putting hyphens into overflow words

        Could you have No Break applied to other words in the text? Something like this where I have applied No breaks to the words in front, which forces the entire line to break when I add the last word:

        If I clear all the No Breaks in the text and then apply the No Break only to the last word, it works as expected

        winterm
        winterm
        Legend
        October 6, 2017

        What happens if you turn off hyphenation for that piece of text? Text also 'disappears'? You see a red 'plus' in the lower right of your text frame? Chances are, your text frame/column is just too narrow for that long word.

        K
        kyle_bodgeAuthor
        Participant
        October 6, 2017

        It's a fairly short word in a very wide column, and there's plenty of space below it for the word to be bumped to a new line (what I was hoping when I turned no break on), so the word's definitely not too long for the text frame in any way.

        winterm
        winterm
        Legend
        October 6, 2017

        You still didn't say how it acts with hyphenation off. And Willi's advice is really good if you don't want that specific word hyphenated. Did you try it?

        OK, it's hard to tell without seeing actual text. You definitely shouldn't apply no break to the whole sentence, but it must work with a single word, as expected.

        Won't you mind to post a screenshot?

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