Writer Guide

Inserting non-breaking spaces and hyphens
Non-breaking spaces
To prevent two words from being separated at the end of a line, press
Control+spacebar after the first word.
Non-breaking hyphen
You can use a non-breaking hyphen in cases where you do not want the
hyphen to appear at the end of a line, for example in a number such as
123-4567. To insert a non-breaking hyphen, press
Shift+Control+minus sign .
Inserting dashes
To enter en and em dashes, you can use the Replace dashes option
under Tools > AutoCorrect > Options (Figure 66). This option
replaces two hyphens, under certain conditions, with the
corresponding dash.
In the following table, the A and B represent text consisting of letters A
to z or digits 0 to 9.
Text that you type: Result
A - B (A, space, minus, space, B) A – B (A, space, en-dash, space, B)
A -- B (A, space, minus, minus, space, B) A – B (A, space, en-dash, space, B)
A--B (A, minus, minus, B) A—B (A, em-dash, B)
A-B (A, minus, B) A-B (unchanged)
A -B (A, space, minus, B) A -B (unchanged)
A --B (A, space, minus, minus, B) A –B (A, space, en-dash, B)
Another means of inserting en or em dashes is through the Insert >
Special Characters menu. Select the U+2013 or U+2014 character,
respectively.
A third method uses keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts vary
depending on your operating system.
Tip
You can also record macros to insert en and em dashes and
assign those macros to unused key combinations, for example
Ctrl+Shift+N and Ctrl+Shift+M . For more information, see
Chapter 17 (Customizing Writer).
76 OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide