The Broken Words
When typing in Google Docs, the software attempts to optimize the layout of your text to prevent awkward, jagged gaps on the right-hand margin (especially when using justified text alignment). To achieve a cleaner edge, Docs will sometimes automatically hyphenate long words at the end of a line, splitting a word like “communication” into “communi-” on one line and “-cation” on the next. While this might look neat from a distance, it can severely disrupt readability and is often strictly forbidden in academic formatting styles (like APA or MLA), which demand complete, unbroken words regardless of margin spacing.
Enforcing Whole Words
To ensure your text remains intact and stop Google Docs from automatically hyphenating words across line breaks, you must disable the auto-hyphenation feature within the text formatting options.
Open the Google Docs document you are currently working on. It is best to apply this setting to the entire document. Press Ctrl + A (or Command + A on a Mac) to highlight all the text. Next, navigate to the main menu bar at the top of the screen and click on Format. From the drop-down menu, hover over Text to open the secondary menu, and look at the very bottom of that list. If you see a checkmark next to Hyphenation, click it once to remove the checkmark. Docs will immediately recalculate the spacing, forcing all split words to wrap entirely to the next line, guaranteeing no words are broken by hyphens.