How to Turn Off Hyphenation in InDesign

InDesign lets you choose whether or not to hyphenate words in your document. This option is a paragraph-wide setting. If you’re using left-justified text, you can have decent text flow without any hyphenation, since InDesign can break a line between words. If you are using fully justified text—where there is a straight edge on both sides of the text column—hyphenation can help alleviate large chunks of white space between words.

In this quick tutorial, you'll learn how to turn on hyphenation in InDesign. Or if you prefer otherwise, you'll also learn to turn off hyphenation in InDesign.

Do you like video tutorials? Then don't miss this new video by Ashlee Harrell from the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel to learn about InDesign's hyphenation settings:

What You'll Learn in This Tutorial on How to Get Rid of Hyphens in InDesign

These are the points we'll go through in this tutorial on how to get rid of hyphens in InDesign:

How to turn on hyphenation in InDesign in a paragraph
How to turn off hyphenation in InDesign
How to adjust the hyphenation settings to further tweak the text
How to preview the hyphenation adjustments

1. How to Turn on InDesign Hyphenation

Step 1

To start learning about InDesign's hyphenation settings, you need to select the paragraph—or multiple paragraphs—where you'd like to turn on InDesign hyphenation. If you just want one paragraph, you can simply put your cursor somewhere in that paragraph. If you want to select two contiguous paragraphs, just make sure you select some text in each. Most paragraph settings work this way in InDesign.

multiple paragraphs of text with part of each highlighted

Step 2

Open the Paragraph panel. If it’s not open, go up to the Window menu and choose Type & Tables > Paragraph.

selecting the paragraph panel from InDesign's Window menu via the Type & Tables submenu

Step 3

If it’s not already, select the InDesign Hyphenate checkbox at the bottom of the panel to turn on hyphenation in InDesign for your selected paragraph(s). You'll see the text reflow and create a better-balanced paragraph. Additionally, if you want to remove hyphens in InDesign, you can turn off hyphenation in InDesign in this same menu.

the paragraph panel with hyphenation checkbox selected

2. How to Adjust the Hyphenation Settings in InDesign

The InDesign Hyphenate checkbox only gives you the option of off or on, but sometimes you need more granular control over the hyphenation settings in your paragraphs.

Step 1

Open the Paragraph panel, if it’s not already.

Step 2

Click on the Paragraph panel menu in the upper-right corner of the panel and choose Hyphenation.

the paragraph panel menu with hyphenation menu selected

Step 3

In the Hyphenation Settings dialog box, you’ll see the same Hyphenate checkbox from the main panel. Keep it selected to be able to access a few extra controls.

the hyphenation settings dialog box, with hyphenation checkbox selected

Step 4

The slider near the bottom lets you focus the text to have better spacing (to the left on the slider) or fewer hyphens (to the right). Move the slider towards one end or keep a happy balance with it set in the center.

the hyphenation slider in the settings panel to set balance between spacing and hyphenation

Step 5

With the Preview option checked, you can see how the slider affects your selected text.

setting the hyphenation slider to achieve better hyphenation balance

That's It! Now You Know How to Turn Off Hyphenation in InDesign

This was our tutorial on how to turn off hyphenation in InDesign. This is a very useful program, but it has tons of settings and customizations that can be difficult to find or work with.

I hope you found this tutorial useful and that it will motivate you to further your knowledge of hyphenation in design.

Go Beyond and Explore More InDesign Resources

You know the basics of how to turn on and how to turn off hyphenation in InDesign. There are several more options in the Hyphenation controls, but those are for a more advanced tutorial. Feel free to test them out on sample text with different fonts and sizes.

For the most part, using the defaults and the slider will do just fine. Using left-justified text will almost always give you better text flow, but when you need fully justified columns, it’s nice to know InDesign gives you control over the hyphenation.

If you enjoyed our tutorial on how to remove hyphens in InDesign, you should definitely look at our other design tutorials. Get started with a magazine layout like this one—there are plenty of InDesign templates to choose from at Envato Elements. And check out other tutorials to help you improve your InDesign skills. Also, visit the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel to watch useful videos like this one: