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kg01915
Inspiring
July 20, 2023
Answered

Incorrect hyphenation of specific word in InDesign

  • July 20, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 1601 views

Hi all! I'm working on a book layout in InDesign 2023 on a Mac. There is one word in the whole book that continually hyphenates incorrectly: lovingkindness.  As you can see below, it is automatically hyphenating it as "lovingk-indness," which is obviously incorrect. It should be "loving-kindness."

The language setting is correct: English USA. Here are my hyphenation settings:

I went into InDesign/Preferences/Dictionary and changed the Hyphenation setting from "Hunspell" to "Proximity." This did resolve the hyphenation (simply removing any hyphenation at all for that word), but it caused numerous other issues throughout the document. 

Is there a place where you can make an exception for the hyphenation of a specific word? Or how else might I resolve this issue?

 

(P.S. I know others have written about this issue and I've read multiple related threads, but none that have been helpful.)

 

Thanks in advance for the help!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer kg01915

    @James Gifford—NitroPress—that was incredibly helpful! Thank you for your very clear and specific directions. That indeed solved my problem! Thanks again!

    2 replies

    Scott Falkner
    Community Expert
    Scott FalknerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 20, 2023

    InDesign uses a dictionary to hyphenate, which is why it is important to apply a language to your text. That language selects both the hyphenation dictionary and the spelling dictionary if you use the spelling checker. if a word is not found in the dictionary InDesign will use an algorithm. “Lovingkindness” is probably not in the dictionary. You can check by running the spelling checker to see if the word is flagged. Since it’s not in the dictionary InDesign will guess at the hyphenation and, in this case, get it wrong.

     

    As James said, use the User Dictionary to enter custom hyphenation and, as a bonus, keep the word from being flagged as a spelling error.

    K
    kg01915Author
    Inspiring
    July 20, 2023

    Thanks, @Scott Falkner. You're right, Merriam Webster shows the proper spelling as "loving-kindness" but we are quoting from a specific Bible translation that uses it as one full word ("lovingkindness"). Thanks for your input. James' response solved the problem!

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    July 20, 2023

    You can modify hyphenation. Under Edit | Spelling | User Dictionary, type in the word. Click Hyphenate. Default/rule-driven hyphenation points are marked with a double tilde (~~). And yes, some rule thinks the word should be hyphenated at that point. Delete the two tildes between k and i,  and n and g. Click Add. That should fix it.

      K
      kg01915AuthorCorrect answer
      Inspiring
      July 20, 2023

      @James Gifford—NitroPress—that was incredibly helpful! Thank you for your very clear and specific directions. That indeed solved my problem! Thanks again!

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