How to adjust hyphenation?

[Coral Southwell]

Hello, can anyone explain to me how to adjust hyphenation? (I have read the thread about hyphenation and even though it's not generally liked, I need to use it sometimes. The books I work on are set in two narrow columns, and without hyphenation the lines can be too loose or too tight. Tracking and kerning doesn't always work; sometimes it will move a whole long word up or down, instead of breaking it, and make the next line too tight or loose. I've tried adjusting the hyphenation zone under the Text/Hyphenation menu but that doesn't seem to do anything, no matter how much I change it. What am I missing? I do not have the option of editing the text.

Thanks,
Coral Southwell

[Claudio González]

From the Help menu un PageMaker 6.52 for Mac:

With the Type > Hyphenation command, you can control several aspects of
hyphenation at a paragraph and paragraph-style level, including turning
off hyphenation completely. You can determine what methods PageMaker uses
to hyphenate individual words, specify how far from the right side of
a column you will allow PageMaker to hyphenate (not applicable in justified
text), and specify how many consecutive lines of text can end with a hyphen.
To specify a hyphenation method:
1 Select one or more paragraphs, or edit a paragraph style.
To edit a paragraph style, choose Window > Show Styles, press Command
and click a paragraph style.
2 Do one of the following:
• If you have one or more paragraphs selected, choose Type > Hyphenation.
• If you are editing a paragraph style, click Hyph in the Style Options
dialog box.
3 Click On for the Hyphenation setting.
If you click Off, PageMaker ignores discretionary hyphens, although it
will still break words that have ordinary hyphens in them.
4 Select one of the following options, and then click OK:
• Manual Only hyphenates only those words containing a discretionary hyphen.
• Manual Plus Dictionary hyphenates words containing discretionary hyphens,
as well as words in the dictionary assigned to the paragraph.
• Manual Plus Algorithm combines both Manual Only and Manual Plus Dictionary
and, if a hyphenation point is not found, an algorithm is used to determine
hyphenation. The algorithm is a set of rules for hyphenation, based on
the words in the main dictionary; it permits hyphenation breaks in words
not found in the PageMaker dictionary or the user dictionary.
Note: In the case of a conflict between the placement of a discretionary
hyphen and where the dictionary would hyphenate the word, the discretionary
hyphen prevails.

[Dominic Hurley]

The hyphenation zone is only for text run ragged; as you've found, it doesn't do anything with text justified elft and right.

[Claudio González]

...specify how far from the right side of a column you will allow PageMaker
to hyphenate (not applicable in justified text)...

I was under the impresion that "justified" is usually taken to mean "fully justified" (left and right). And that the other usual names are "left aligned", "right aligned", and "centered".

Justified text in narrow columns will almost inevitably produce too loose and too tight lines, even with hyphenation.

[Roger Aslin]

Coral,
I must agree with Claudio: narrow columns and justification are doomed to yield disappointment.
I suggest you use manual hyphernation only with a little bit of tweaking to help, but most of it will not look good.
Roger

[Dominic Hurley]

I was under the impression that "justified" is usually taken to mean "fully justified" (left and right).

That's my understanding (and usual usage) too. Sometimes, however, I write something like "justified left and right" or "ranged left and right" to differentiate from a situation where the last line of a paragraph is fully justified (as opposed to ranged left). One of my apps calls this "Justified (last line justified)".

[Coral Southwell]

Thanks, y'all. I guess what I was overlooking was the word "justified" in the help menu. Looks like I'll have to keep hyphenating manually. I don't mind doing that, except that when the text is edited and reflows, you end up with a hyphen in the middle of a line.

Does InDesign handle this any better?

--Coral

[Bob Levine]

> Does InDesign handle this any better?

Absolutely. ID's text composition is lightyears ahead of anything else.

Bob

[David Crowe]

>I don't mind doing that, except that when the text is edited and reflows,
you end up with a hyphen in the middle of a line.

Use optional hyphens. Ctrl-Shift-hyphen on a standard English-language setup.

[Coral Southwell]

Use optional hyphens. Ctrl-Shift-hyphen on a standard English-language
setup

That doesn't work either. When I do that, nothing happens.

--Coral

[David Crowe]

If typing a "real" hyphen breaks the word as you want, and typing a "soft" hyphen doesn't, the hyphenation settings for the paragraph must need changing.

Check that hyphenation is active in the paragraph in question, and reduce the hyphenation zone to something like 5mm or ź inch.

[Coral Southwell]

David, I tried that. Hyphenation is on for the selected paragraph, I changed the hyphenation zone to 5mm, and it's still not working. I can get a manual hyphen but not a discretionary hyphen to work.

But, can you explain how the hyphenation zone works? Do smaller numbers make PM hyphenate more than larger numbers do?

Thanks again,
Coral

(P. S. By the way, I'm using PM7 on Windows 2000.)

[Dominic Hurley]

Do you have hyphenation for the relevant paragraphs on both under the "Type" menu and udner the paragraph style? Do you have the correct language dictionary selected in the paragraph style? Do you have "Manual + Dictionary" or "Manual + Algorithm" selected in the style? And do you have more than the consecutive hyphens set to more than one?

I'm not clear - are you setting ragged or justified text? The hyphenation zone will affect only the fomer. (Generally, the smaller the zone, the more words will be hyphenated. It's a tool for setting how even you want your rag to be.)

[Coral Southwell]

I have all the settings correct, but the text is justified (sigh).

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer!

--Coral

[David Crowe]

Another factor that will affect hyphenation is the minimum/maximum word spacing, and the letter spacing (if you allow that). Check under Type > Paragraph > Spacing.

[Dominic Hurley]

Are you getting any automatic hyphenation at all? If so, maybe it's just that the problem words are not in the dictionary.

[David Crowe]

>maybe it's just that the problem words are not in the dictionary.

But they should still hyphenate where Coral adds optional hyphens.