DELETE discretionary hyphen

Question

I've selected no hyphenation across the board in my InDesign file, but it doesn't stop what I just learned are discretionary hyphens from appearing. Is there a way these can be deleted/turned off? I'm looking to have NO hyphens in the document, and haven't found any straightforward answers on how to do so/if it's possible.

Joel Cherney · Accepted Answer

If you turn hyphenation OFF, discretionary hyphens will not be used.

I wasn't sure if this was the case, so I ran a little test to determine if the Hyphenation setting determines the behavior of discretionary hyphens:

Seems that the state of the Hyphenation setting doesn't affect the behavior of the discretionary hyphen.

If you want to remove discretionary hyphens throughout the document, and they are actually discretionary hyphens and not something else, then you can use the Find/Change dialog and look for -^ and replace with nothing:

It doesn't matter if the discretionary hyphen is showing or not; the same ^- search will find it.

Steve Werner · Answer

I think your understanding of "discretionary hyphens" and how they work is incorrect.

From the Help file: "Discretionary hyphens

A discretionary hyphen (Type > Insert Special Character > Hyphens And Dashes > Discretionary Hyphen) appears only if the word breaks. This option prevents the common typographic problem of hyphenated words, such as “care-giver,” appearing in the middle of a line after text reflows. Similarly, you can also add a discretionary line break character."

If you turn hyphenation OFF, discretionary hyphens will not be used.

Hyphenation can be turned off in the Control panel or in Hyphenation Settings:

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded