Keep words together with nonbreaking spaces and hyphens

(Word 97/2000/2001/2002)

When you type information like dates, company names, or people names in your document, you may want to prevent Word from wrapping a line in the middle of the date or name. Similarly, you may want to prevent Word from breaking certain hyphenated words and telephone numbers across lines. Fortunately, you can easily do both using nonbreaking spaces and nonbreaking hyphens.

To insert a nonbreaking space, press [Ctrl][Shift][Spacebar]. The text on either side of the nonbreaking space will always stay together on the same line. When the Show/Hide ¶ button on the Standard toolbar is turned on, nonbreaking spaces are designated by a display character resembling the degree symbol (°) (the tilde (~) in Word 2001). However, this display character is hidden when you print your document or view it in Print Preview mode.

To insert a nonbreaking hyphen, press [Ctrl][Shift][-] ([command][shift][-] in Word 2001) using the standard keyboard. (Using the [-] key on the numeric keypad inserts an en dash instead.) The text on either side of the nonbreaking hyphen will always stay together on the same line. When you're viewing your document onscreen, nonbreaking hyphens are designated by a display character that resembles an en dash (-). However, this display character looks just like a standard hyphen when you print your document or view it in Print Preview mode.