How can you use hyphenation to improve your typography?

2 When to hyphenate?

Hyphenation is not always necessary or desirable. You need to consider the type of text, the language, the audience, and the context before deciding whether to hyphenate or not. For example, you may want to avoid hyphenation for headlines, titles, captions, labels, logos, or other short and prominent texts, as it can disrupt the visual impact and clarity of your message. You may also want to avoid hyphenation for texts that are written in languages that have complex or irregular rules for breaking words, such as German or Arabic, or that use non-Latin alphabets, such as Chinese or Japanese. Furthermore, you may want to consider the preferences and expectations of your audience, as some readers may find hyphenation distracting or annoying.

3 How to hyphenate?

Hyphenation can be done manually or automatically, depending on the software and settings you use. Manual hyphenation allows for more control and accuracy, yet it can be time-consuming and tedious. On the other hand, automatic hyphenation saves time and effort, but can also produce errors or inconsistencies. Therefore, you need to carefully check and adjust your hyphenation results, following some general guidelines such as using a reliable dictionary or style guide to determine the correct way to break words in your language; breaking words only between syllables, not within them; avoiding breaking words that have prefixes, suffixes or compound parts; and avoiding breaking words that are already hyphenated. Additionally, you should not break words that are part of proper names, acronyms, numbers, dates, or code blocks. Moreover, it's best to avoid breaking words at the end of a page, column, or paragraph as it can create confusion for the reader. Finally, try to limit hyphenation to no more than three consecutive lines as too many breaks in a row can create a cluttered or choppy appearance.

4 What are the challenges?

Hyphenation is not a perfect solution and can create some challenges for your typography. Over-hyphenation occurs when too many words or too frequently are hyphenated, creating a visual noise or a loss of rhythm in the text. Additionally, under-hyphenation happens when too few words or too sparingly are hyphenated, causing large gaps or uneven margins. Orphans and widows refer to single words or short lines that are isolated at the end or the beginning of a page, column, or paragraph, which can lead to visual imbalance or disruption in the text. Lastly, hyphenation conflicts create ambiguity or confusion between words or meanings, as well as inconsistency with other typographic elements such as punctuation, capitalization, or emphasis.

5 How to solve them?

In order to overcome these challenges, you need to apply certain typographic techniques and principles, such as adjusting font size, line height, letter spacing, or word spacing to create more or less room for your text. Additionally, you can use different fonts, weights, styles, or colors to create contrast between different levels of text. You can also use non-breaking spaces, soft hyphens, or discretionary hyphens to control the automatic hyphenation of your software. Furthermore, you can use hanging punctuation, optical margin alignment, or negative indent to create visual alignment between your text and margins. Lastly, you should edit or rewrite your text to make it more concise and clear.