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Re: Hyphenation in technical documentation
Paul, Welcome to techwr-l. As you will eventually come to know, if you don't already, I spout off about a lot of topics but I actually have some expertise when it comes to typography (as do several others here). In _justified_ text, turning off hyphenation is a bad idea, as it leads to pigeonholes and rivers (unsightly blotches of white where word spaces get too large). These impede readability. In _ragged right_ (unjustified) text, turning off hyphenation increases the raggedness. Often this technique is used in situations where the designer makes an esthetic choice to do so; but in technical communication, readability is the goal; so I wouldn't turn it off here, either. There is an urban myth that hyphens confuse readers. Sloppily applied hyphens might do that. For example, if I have a hyphenated compound and one part of the compound is a multisyllabic word, I make an effort not to break the compound anywhere else but at the original hard hyphen. Breaking it in two places does, I think, impede readability. Otherwise, I'd advise keeping hyphenation turned on. Dick ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ROBOHELP X5 - SEE THE ALL NEW ROBOHELP X5 IN ACTION! RoboHelp X5 is a giant leap forward in Help authoring technology, featuring all new Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more! View an online demo: http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrldemo --- You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info. References:
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