Hyphenation
- For hyphens in compound words, see Compound words.
When a word extends beyond the end of a line, it can be broken in the middle and written on two lines, with a hyphen to indicate the breakoff. This is called hyphenation. ConTeXt has a great many facilities for dealing with hyphenation, both automatically and manually; they are gathered on this page.
Contents
Change the hyphenation language
Use \language[de]. NB: this will also alter the marks used for \quotation, etc.
Allow breaking at existing hyphens
To allow breaking at hyphens, slashes, etc., write \setbreakpoints[compound] at the start of your document.
Specify how to break a word
Write \hyphenation{po-ly-syl-lab-ic} at the start of your document. (This will not be remembered across documents.)
Use the \- command. poly\-syllabic
.
To never break a word, write \hyphenation{polysyllabic}.
Prevent hyphenation locally
There are two ways to prevent a word from being hyphenated: the traditional \hbox and the more natural command \nothyphenated.
\hbox{myfragileword} % old-fashioned \nothyphenated{myfragileword} % MkIV, since 2013-04-21
Tune the auto-hyphenation algorithm
Use the \setupalign parameters concerning justification and hyphenation.
Penalize consecutive hyphens
To penalize hyphens on consecutive lines, set \doublehyphendemerits. Its default value is 10000; to double that, write \doublehyphendemerits=20000
.
Mark hyphenated lines for review
See the article on reviewing hyphenation.