How to get a non-breaking hyphen in PowerPoint

In Microsoft Word and PowerPoint for Windows, a non-breaking hyphen is useful when you want to keep a hyphenated word together all one one line. For example, you could be entering a phone number. If you enter it as 555 hyphen 1234, it is possible for 555- to appear at the end of one line and 1234 at the start of the next line.


You can use Ctrl-Shift-Hyphen in Word to insert a non-breaking hyphen, but this shortcut does not work in PowerPoint.

To insert a non-breaking hyphen in PowerPoint, simply press and hold Alt while you type 8208 on the number-pad. (It does not work if you enter 8208 on the number row above the letters.)

Be careful not to confuse the non-breaking hyphen (Alt-8208) with the soft hyphen (Alt-0173). A soft hyphen is the opposite of a non-breaking hyphen, which means that it is only visible when a line break is required. The purpose of a soft hyphen is to indicate where to hyphenate a word when a line break is necessary. You can also use a non-breaking En Dash (Alt-8211), non-breaking Em Dash (Alt-8212), non-breaking Horizontal Bar (Alt-8213) as required.

Not all fonts support special symbols such as non-breaking hyphens, so if you change your font, or cut and paste the text into another application, the non-breaking hyphen could be replaced by a square box or a funny symbol.

Another useful tool is the non-breaking space. I use these to avoid ending a line with a number that is followed by a unit or a word (such as "35 kg" or "20 million"). To insert a non-breaking space in Word, type Ctrl-Shift-Space; to insert a non-breaking space in PowerPoint, type Alt-0160 (using the number pad, not the number row).

Comments

Anonymous said…
Very helpful, thank you!
Anonymous said…
Need to be sure NumLock is on. Otherwise you get something like an ">."
Anonymous said…
Just what I needed. Thank you, Sassan! :)
Anonymous said…
There is no NumPad on my laptop, this solution will not work. :(
Anonymous said…
If you do not have a NumPad, use character map. Ask Cortana to "open character map" or press "Windows button+R" and type "charmap" then click okay. You can then copy and paste whatever character you are looking for.
Unknown said…
Awesome. This info was difficult to find so thank you very much :)
Anonymous said…
Many thanks, I knew about the fix with word but had never run into the problem before using powerpoint.
Anonymous said…
On a laptop, you may also use the MS-Word "Alt+X" shortcut. It switches from the previous character to its Unicode value and back. Unicode values have to be written in hexadecimal form. So typing "2010" then "Alt+X" will provide the same result as "Alt+8208". Depending on your localization, "Alt+X" may be replaced by "Alt+C". Unfortunately, it only works with Word, not Powerpoint.
James Milles said…
Another shortcut: Open a Word document and use Command+Shift+- to type a hard hyphen. Then cut the hyphen from the Word doc, switch to the Powerpoint slide, and paste it.
Anonymous said…
Very happy to be part of the very select group of people who knows the shortcut to the non-breaking hyphen on Powerpoint :)

wait... how does it work on Chrome
Anonymous said…
Very kelpful

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