The Hyphenation and Justification Engine
Google Docs is designed to create visually pleasing, professional documents. When you are writing a standard paragraph and the text reaches the right edge of the page, the word processor automatically moves the next word to the following line. However, if you are using “Justified” text alignment (where the text is stretched so both the left and right margins are perfectly flush), Docs might occasionally decide to automatically split a long word across two lines using a hyphen. This is an old typographical technique designed to prevent massive, ugly gaps of white space between words on the justified line above.
While hyphenation improves the “block” look of justified text, it can make the document significantly harder to read, especially for individuals with dyslexia or in documents intended for digital screens rather than print. Furthermore, automatic hyphenation engines sometimes split words at awkward syllables, changing the visual rhythm of the sentence. If you are writing a legal contract, a strict academic paper, or simply prefer that every word remains intact on a single line regardless of margin gaps, you must disable automatic hyphenation.
How to Stop Automatic Word Splitting
You can prevent Google Docs from inserting hyphens into your words via the Format menu.
- Open your document in Google Docs.
- Highlight the text you want to protect from hyphenation (press
Ctrl + AorCmd + Ato select the entire document). - Look at the top toolbar and click on the Format menu.
- Scroll down the dropdown list and hover your mouse over Text.
- In the secondary menu that appears, look for the option labelled Hyphenation.
- If there is a checkmark next to “Hyphenation,” click it to disable the feature.
Google Docs will instantly remove all automatically generated hyphens from the selected text. If a word is too long to fit at the end of a line, the entire word will now simply drop down to the beginning of the next line, keeping it intact.