Most of the time in a Microsoft Word document we want the text to automatically
wrap. That is, to move to the next line when it's too long to fit on one line.
So for instance in this text,
currently it's breaking right after the first word and the next sentence but if
I changed the text here, it automatically pushes to the next line.
This feature called word wrap is great except when it breaks up text we want to
stay together such as dates, names, phone numbers,
phrases like state of the art, formulas, titles,
and basically any other text that should remain together on the same line.
Let's look at three simple ways to keep text together. I'm Dawn Bjork,
The Software Pro and I'm also a certified Microsoft Word expert.
Your options for keeping texts together in Microsoft Word include non-breaking
spaces,
non-breaking hyphens and non-breaking paragraphs and lines.
Non-breaking
spaces are ways to glue together content or text that we want to keep on the
same line.
Now the challenges is that sometimes when you don't know what else to do then
the solution could be, well I'll just come in front of this date and hit ENTER.
Now that can create all sorts of other problems. First of all,
if your text is formatted using styles then it might not look exactly the same
as when we have what are called soft returns.
That is when the text just automatically flows to the next line and as soon as
we start adding other content or making other edits,
then this also might require that we have to go back into the text to fix it.
So rather than trying to force the new line instead,
we'll put in some non-breaking spaces.
Now it'll make it a lot easier for us to see this.
If we also turn on a feature called Show/Hide.
You might be familiar with this.
This is in the Home tab in the group for Paragraph features and it's simply this
Paragraph Mark.
Now this will display non-printing characters so they won't display when the
document is printed.
By enabling this we can see that we have what are called soft spaces.
That is where these dots appear between those words and we're going to delete
those where we want to instead put in a non-breaking space. In this case,
I'll delete between the month and the day and instead use a keyboard shortcut
CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR
and that puts in a character or a symbol.
It looks kind of like the degree symbol.
This is your non-breaking space or the glue. Let's repeat that.
Remove the soft space CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR
and now regardless of what happens to this text,
this date will stay together and we still have a soft return at the end of the
line.
This also can be very helpful for us when we have names specially with titles
that we want to keep together. The
non-breaking hyphen works very much in the same way.
For this phrase state-of-the-art,
we simply have standard hyphens or sometimes called soft hyphens and we're going
to put in a non-breaking hyphen. Once again I'll delete,
CTRL+SHIFT+HYPHEN.
What we see when Show/Hide is enabled is that this appears or displays
differently but it will display and print the same as a regular hyphen when it
comes to the final product. Once again,
CTRL+SHIFT+HYPHEN and we'll continue to modify this phrase so that it will all
stay together on the same line.
I'm going to turn off the Show/Hide for just a moment so you can see that the
display or the content hasn't really changed,
but now this phrase will stay together.
What can we do to create non-breaking paragraphs and lines?
Sometimes the challenge is that we have a line or a title that we'd like to
break in a specific place and if we hit a hard return such as in this example,
then the formatting can change. We're forcing it to go to another line,
but we're actually creating another paragraph and if this has a style associated
with it or space below the paragraph,
then it will not look the same as it did before. Instead
we can move to the place where we want to create the break.
So this becomes a new line but stays as the same paragraph.
All you need to do with that is SHIFT+ENTER.
We'll delete that extra space. So SHIFT+ENTER.
Notice once again with Show/Hide turned on,
we get a lot more information about our document. And so,
anytime you're editing in Word,
consider having that Show/Hide enabled because it will help you to know exactly
what you're doing in the document and also give you information about what
others have done as well.
Another challenge with line breaks and page breaks is when we might have
headings that are on one page and the rest of the content is on the other or
where paragraphs might split between two different pages.
How do we usually solve this? Well,
it tends to be by putting in a page break or hitting the hard return enough
times to push it down to the next page. But anytime we do that,
unless we really did want to have a page break here,
now you are creating a problem that you'll probably have to go back and fix.
So you're not being very productive and and simply creating some editing issues
that you have to go back and fix. Instead, here's how we can correct this.
So the goal is I want to keep that heading attached to or glued to the paragraph
below it and for those of you familiar with styles,
this is actually something you can build into the styles feature.
But for this we'll simply go into and look at what's available in the paragraph
formatting tools. A couple of different ways to get to this. In the Home tab,
we could simply click on this arrow.
That will take us into the paragraph dialog box. That would be one option.
The other is to simply right-click anywhere on that paragraph and from your
shortcut menu left-click on paragraph. Next,
we see the dialog box that you're probably familiar with where you can adjust
indents and line spacing and change the look of your paragraphs.
Our focus here though is on the other tab, Line and Page Breaks.
By default,
a feature called a Widow and Orphan control is enabled and that simply means
that a widow or an orphan that is a single line that is left by itself on the
page or only one line is moved to the next page.
And so with that control enabled they will be at least two lines that will move.
What we're interested in this case here is to say Keep with next.
And so, by simply saying Keep with Next,
this heading will then automatically move to the next line.
Now another thing to try and consider is Keep lines together.
This means that if you have one or more paragraphs highlighted,
the lines within that paragraph will stay together on one page.
So we don't want to do it for the entire document obviously,
but it is a way to tell Word to help you with the flow of your document text.
So simply by enabling that Keep with next feature,
now this heading will stay with the following paragraph and when you have
Show/Hide turned on,
you'll see this idea here is just that little square in front of it.
Once again,
a non-printed character actually says that you have some of these line and page
break features enabled.
So now you have three simple ways to save time and to keep text together in a
Microsoft Word document.
For more tips on Microsoft Word head to TheSoftwarePro.com/Word
and subscribe to this channel for future videos. I'm Dawn Bjork,
The Software Pro. Thanks so much for watching.
[inaudible].