Fixing things that break at the end of lines that you really don't want to break at the end of lines

The advent of e-learning has also brought the advent of e-learning or e-practitioners or e-anything with the e- bit often appearing on its own at the end of a line and looking decidely unprofessional. In the old days of ILT and even older days of English at school we were taught not to let dates, names and the like break like that. The solution is to use something called, believe it or not, a non-breaking space or hyphen.

(NB You may notice that I don't know how to stop spaces or hyphens breaking on web pages! Sorry. I will find out.)

The short-cuts in Word are:

Non-breaking space (e.g. for dates) Ctrl+Shift+space

Non-breaking hyphen: Ctrl+Shift+ -

More detailed illustrated notes, including making a toolbar button to do the job for you, are available here.

Or you could take the long route via Insert>Symbol and choose Special Characters and then Insert the one you want. That can be tedious if you have a word or phrase you use a lot. So here are two speedier options:

Find & replace

This means bashing away as normal and not bothering then fixing the bits at the end. Use the Edit>Replace menu. To access the awkward characters click on the More button and then Special.

The non-breaking hyphen is ^~ instead of -

The non-breaking space is ^s

Then just hit replace all or, if you're of a nervous disposition, use Find and you'll get the option to Replace each time.

A new button!

Another alternative is to get your own button to do the job. This is a bit advanced and only for those who like messing about with things and can rescue themselves if it goes wrong. In a new document, use Tools>Macro>Record New Macro.

Give it a temporary name and click Toolbars. Press OK.

Drag the Command line onto a toolbar. Click on Close. From here on every move you make is recorded - indicated by a cassette tape (remember them!?) symbol. So just do what you need, no more. For a non-breaking hyphen, that would be holding the Ctrl and Shift key down while pressing the - key. Then press the Stop Recording button on the Macro control box.

That's the instructions recorded and assigned to the toolbar but the button is probably a bit ugly so change it. Right click on any toolbar and select Customise. Right click on the new toolbar addition to get the choices below:

Change the name and choose an image.

In this case I chose a Clubs symbol and also moved the button to a more appropriate place on the Format toolbar but the choice is yours.

Clicking the Clubs will now put in a non-beaking space.

I reckon that's a long-winded way to do the job and prefer the Find & Replace option. Or that could be made into a macro and that assigned to a button, couldn't it? Macros are worth getting to know, if you're that way inclined.